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The 
French Revolution 



A SHOR T 
HIS TOR Y 

By 
R. M. Johnston 

M.A., tANTAB. 

Assistant Professor of History in Harvard University 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1909 



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Copyright, 1909 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Published, May, igog 




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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

JUN 14 18U9 

1^ Ccpynirnt Entry ^ 



TO 

IRa^ner IFleate 

IN MEMORY OF OLD PEMBROKE DAYS 



PREFACE 

The object of this book is similar to that 
with which, a few years ago, I wrote a short 
biography of Napoleon. The main outHnes of 
the Revolution, the proportion and relation of 
things, tend to become obscured under the ac- 
cumulation of historical detail that is now pro- 
ceeding. This is an attempt, therefore, to dis- 
entangle from the mass of details the shape, 
the movement, the significance of this great 
historical cataclysm. To keep the outline 
clear I have deliberately avoided mentioning 
the names of many subordinate actors; think- 
ing that if nothing essential was connected 
with them the mention of their names would 
only tend to confuse matters. Similarly with 
incidents, I have omitted a few, such as the 
troubles at Avignon, and changed the emphasis 
on others, judging freely their importance and 
not following the footsteps of my predecessors, 
as in the case of the capture of the Bastille, the 
importance of which was vastly exaggerated 
by early writers on the subject. 

V 



VI PREFACE 

The end of the Revolution I place at Bru- 
maire, — as good a date as any, though like all 
others, open to criticism. The present narra- 
tive, however, will be found to merge into that 
of my Napoleon, which forms its natural con- 
tinuation after that date. 

Cambridge, Mass., Feb., 1909. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Perspective of the French Revolution i 

II. Versailles ii 

III. Economic Crisis 25 

IV. Convocation of the States General ... 35 
V. France Comes to Versailles 52 

VI. From Versailles to Paris 7° 

VII. The Assembly Demolishes Privilege ... 89 

VIII. The Flight to Varennes 105 

IX. War Breaks Out 123 

X. The Massacre i39 

XI. Ending the Monarchy ........ i57 

XII. The Fall of the Gironde 170 

XIII. The Reign of Terror 185 

XIV. Thermidor 202 

XV. The Last Days of the Convention . . .222 

XVI. The Directoire 239 

XVII. Art and Literature 262 

Index 279 



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I. Voltaire. 2. Marie Antoinette on her way to 
the guillotine. 3. Fouquier-Tinville. 4. Carrier. 
5. Danton before the Tribunal Revolutionnaire. 



THE 
FRENCH REVOLUTION 

. CHAPTER 1 

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLU- 
TION 

THE magnitude of an event is too apt to 
lie with its reporter, and the reporter 
often fails in his sense of historical 
proportion. The nearer he is to the event the 
more authority he has as a witness, but the less 
authority as a judge. It is time alone can es- 
tablish the relation and harmony of things. 
This is notably the case with the greatest event 
of modern European history, the French Rev- 
olution, and the first task of the historian writ- 
ing a century later, is to attempt to catch its 
perspective. To do this the simplest course 
will be to see how the Revolution has been in- 
terpreted from the moment of its close to the 
present day. 

It was Madame de Stael, under the influence 
of Constant, who first made Europe listen to 
reason after the Bourbon restoration of 1815. 



2 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Her Considerations sur la Revolution francaise, 
published in i8i8, one year after her death, 
was a bold though temperate plea for the cause 
of political liberty. At a moment of reaction 
when the Holy Alliance proclaimed the fra- 
ternity not of men but of monarchs, and the 
direct delegation by Divine Providence of its 
essential virtues to Alexander, Frederick Wil- 
liam and Francis, — at a moment when the 
men of the Convention were proscribed as reg- 
icides, when the word Jacobin sent a thrill 
of horror down every respectable spinal 
chord, the daughter of Necker raised her voice 
to say that if, during the stormy years just 
passed, the people of France had done nothing 
but stumble from crime to folly and from folly 
to crime, the fault did not, after all, lie with 
them, but with the old regime. If Frenchmen 
had failed to show the virtues of freemen, it 
was because they had for so many centuries 
been treated as slaves. This was in 1818, 
three years after Waterloo. 

Madame de Stael was a pamphleteer; the 
historians soon followed. Thiers in 1823, 
Mignet in 1824, produced the first important 
histories of the Revolution; the former more 
eloquent, more popular; the latter more bal- 
lasted with documentary evidence, more accu- 



PERSPECTIVE 3 

rate, more pedestrian, in fact, to this day, in its 
negative manner, one of the best general his- 
tories of the matter. Both of these writers 
were too near their subject and too hampered by 
the reactionary surroundings of the moment to 
be successful when dealing with the larger ques- 
tions the French Revolution involved. Thiers, 
going a step beyond Madame de Stael, fastened 
eagerly on the heroic aspects of his subject. 
It was with this emphasis that later, under 
the more liberal regime of Louis Philippe, he 
continued his work through the epoch of 
Napoleon and produced his immensely popular 
but extremely unsound history of the Consu- 
late and the Empire. In 1840 the remains 
of Napoleon were transferred from St. Helena 
to Paris, and were processionally drawn to the 
Invalides surrounded by the striking figures 
and uniforms of a handful of surviving vet- 
erans, acclaimed by the ringing rhetoric of Vic- 
tor Hugo, who in prose and in verse vividly 
formulated the Napoleonic legend. And just 
before and just after this event, so made to 
strike the imagination and to prepare changes 
of opinion, came a series of notable books. 
They were all similar in that they bore the 
stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and 
forties, interpreting history in terms of the in- 



4 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

dividual; but they differed in their poHtical 
bias. These works were written by Carlyle, 
Louis Blanc, Lamartine and Michelet. 

Carlyle's French Revolution belongs far 
more to the domain of literature than to that 
of history. Its brilliancy may still dazzle 
those who are able to think of Carlyle as no 
more than the literary artist; it will not blind 
those who see foremost in him the great 
humanitarian. He was too impulsive an art- 
ist to resist the high lights of his subject, and 
was hypnotized by Versailles and the guillo- 
tine just as his contemporary Turner was 
by the glories of flaming sunsets and tum- 
bling waves. The book is a magnificent quest 
for an unfindable hero, but it is not the French 
Revolution. 

Carlyle's French contemporaries add the 
note of the party man to his individualistic im- 
pressionism, and all three are strong apolo- 
gists of the Revolution. Lamartine extols the 
Girondins ; Blanc sanctifies Robespierre, whom 
he mistakes for an apostle of socialism; Mi- 
chelet, as enthusiastic as either, but larger in 
his views and much more profound as a 
scholar, sees the Revolution as a whole and 
hails in it the regeneration of humanity. 
Within a few days of the publication of his 



PERSPECTIVE 5 

first volumes, France had risen in revolution 
once more and had proclaimed the Second Re- 
public. She then, in the space of a few months, 
passed through all the phases of political 
thought which Thiers, Blanc, Lamartine and 
Michelet had glorified — the democratic, the 
bourgeois, the autocratic republic, and finally 
the relapse into the empire — the empire of 
Louis Napoleon. 

And, essentially, the histories of the Revo- 
lution produced by these writers were special 
pleadings for a defeated cause, springing up 
in the year 1848 to a new assertion. Under 
the Second Empire, with autocracy even more 
triumphant than under the brothers of Louis 
XVI, they became the gospels of the recal- 
citrant liberalism of France; Michelet the gos- 
pel of the intellectuals, Blanc the gospel of the 
proletarians. De Tocqueville added his voice 
to theirs, his Ancien Regime appearing in 1856. 
Then came 1870, the fall of the Empire, and 
1 87 1, the struggle between the middle class 
republic of Thiers, and the proletarian republic 
of Paris. The latter, vanquished once more, 
disappeared in a nightmare of assassination 
and incendiarism. 

It was under the impression of this disaster 
that Taine set to work to investigate the past 



6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of his country, and particularly the great Rev- 
olution on which all else appeared to be 
founded. Between 1875 and 1894 he pro- 
duced his Origines de la France Contempo- 
raine, which in a sense supplanted all previous 
works on the Revolution. Behind it could be 
plainly perceived a huge scaffolding of erudite 
labour, and the working of an intellect of ab- 
normal power; but what was not so apparent, 
and is now only being slowly recognised, was 
that much of this erudition was hasty and in- 
spired by preconceived opinions, and that 
Taine's genius was more philosophic than his- 
toric. Assuming the validity of the impres- 
sions he had formed when witnessing the agony 
of Paris in the spring of 1871, his history of the 
Revolution was a powerful and brilliant vindi- 
cation of those impressions. But it is only the 
philosopher who forms his opinions before con- 
sidering the facts, the historian instinctively 
reverses the order of these phenomena. As it 
was, Taine's great work made a tremendous 
impact on the intellect of his generation, and 
nearly all that has been written on the Revolu- 
tion since his day is marked with his mark. 
His thesis was that the Church and the State 
were the great institutions whereby brute man 
had acquired his small share of justice and 



PERSPECTIVE 7 

reason, and that to hack at the root of both 
State and Church was fatal ; it could only lead 
to the dictatorship of the soldier or to that of 
the mob. Of these two evils the former ap- 
peared to him the less, while the latter he could 
only think of in terms of folly and outrage. 
Taine's conservatism was the reaction of opin- 
ion against the violence of the Commune and 
the weak beginnings of the Third Republic, as 
Michelet's liberalism had been its reaction 
against Orleanist and Bonapartist middle class 
and military dictation. 

Since Taine's great book, the influence of 
which is, in this year 1909, only just beginning 
to fade, what have we had? Passing over 
von Sybel's considerable and popular history 
of the Revolution, we have Sorel's U Europe 
et la Revolution frangaise, more historical, 
more balanced than Taine's work, clear in style 
and in arrangement, but on the whole super- 
ficial in ideas and incorrect in details. Of far 
deeper significance is the Histoire Socialiste of 
Jean Jaures, of which the title is too 
narrow; Histoire du peiiple, or Histoire des 
classes oiwrieres, would have more closely de- 
fined the scope of this remarkable work. Here 
we have a new phenomenon, history written 
for the labouring class and from the point of 



8 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

view of the labouring class. And although 
not free from the taint of the party pamphlet, 
not of the first rank for historical erudition, 
intellectual force or artistic composition, 
Jaures' history presents the Revolution under 
the aspect that gives most food for thought 
and that places it most directly in touch with 
the problems of the present. 

Last of all, what of the labours of the pro- 
fessed historian of to-day? Few of the writ- 
ers just named could stand the tests rigidly 
applied to the young men sent out in large num- 
bers of recent years by the universities as 
technically trained historians. Of these many 
have turned their attention to the vast field 
offered by the Revolution and some have done 
good work. The trend of modern effort, how- 
ever, is to straighten out the details but to 
avoid the large issues; to establish beyond 
question the precise shade of the colour of 
Robespierre's breeches, but to give up as un- 
attainable having any opinion whatever on the 
French Revolution as a whole. Not but that, 
here and there, excellent work is being done. 
Aulard has published an important history of 
the Revolution which is a good corrective to 
Taine's; the Ministry of Public Instruction 
helps the publication of the documents drawn 



PERSPECTIVE 9 

up to guide the States-General, a vast under- 
taking that sheds a flood of Hght on the eco- 
nomic condition of France in 1789. The his- 
torians have, in fact, reached a moment of 
more impartiahty, more detachment, more strict 
setting out of facts; and with the general re- 
sult that the specialist benefits and the public 
loses. 

What has been said should explain why it 
is that the Revolution appears even more 
difficult to treat as a whole at the present day 
than it did at the time of Thiers and Mignet. 
The event was so great, the shock was so se- 
vere, that from that day to this France has 
continued to reel and rock from the blow. It 
is only within the most recent years that we can 
see going on under our eyes the last oscilla- 
tions, the slow attainment of the new demo- 
cratic equilibrium. The end is not yet, but 
what that end must eventually be now seems 
clear beyond a doubt. The gradual political 
education and coming to power of the masses 
is a process that is the logical outcome of the 
Revolution; and the joining of hands of a wing 
of the intellectuals with the most radical sec- 
tion of the working men, is a sign of our times 
not lightly to be passed over. From Voltaire 
before the Revolution to Anatole France, at 



lo FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the present day, the tradition and development 
is continuous and logical. 

It now remains to be said that if this is the 
line along which the perspective of the 
Revolution is to be sought, this is not the place 
in which the details of that perspective can be 
adequately set out. That must be reserved for 
a history of far larger dimensions, and of much 
slower achievement, of which a number of 
pages are already written. In this volume 
nothing more can be attempted than a sketch 
in brief form, affording a general view of the 
Revolution down to the year 1799, when Bona- 
parte seized power. 



CHAPTER II 

VERSAILLES 

AT the close of the i8th century France 
had more nearly reached her growth 
than any of her great European rivals ; 
she was far more like the France of to-day, 
than might at first be supposed by an English- 
man, American or German, thinking of what 
his own country accomplished during the 19th 
century. Her population of about 25,000,000 
was three times more numerous than that of 
England. Paris, with 600,000 inhabitants or 
more, was much nearer the present-day city 
in size than any other capital of Europe, ex- 
cept Naples. Socially, economically, politi- 
cally, notwithstanding gross abuses, there was 
great development; and the reformer who re- 
modelled the institutions of France in 1800 de- 
clared that the administrative machine erected 
by the Bourbons was the best yet devised by 
human ingenuity. Large manufacturing cities 
and a number of active ports indicated the ad- 
vent of a great economic period. 

II 



12 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

All this reposed, however, on a very incon- 
gruous foundation. Feudalism, medisevalism, 
autocracy, had built up a structure of caste 
distinction and class privilege to which custom, 
age, stagnation and ignorance, lent an air of 
preordained and indispensable stability. The 
Church, most privileged of all corporations, 
turned her miracles and her terrors, both pres- 
ent and future, into the most powerful buttress 
of the fabric. The noblesse, supreme as a 
caste, almost divided influence with the Church. 
The two, hand in hand, dominated France 
outside the larger towns. Each village had 
its cure and its seigneur. The cure collected 
his tithes and inculcated the precepts of re- 
ligion, precepts which at the close of the i8th 
century, preached Bourbonism as one of the es- 
sential manifestations of Providence on earth. 
The seigneur, generally owning the greater 
part of all freehold property, not only weighed 
as a landlord but exercised many exclusive 
privileges, and applied the most drastic of sanc- 
tions to the whole as the local administrator 
of justice. There were hundreds of devout 
priests and of humane seigneurs, but a propor- 
tion, conspicuous if small, were otherwise; and 
the system gave such an opportunity for evil 
doing, that opinion naturally, but unjustly, con- 



VERSAILLES 13 

verted the ill deeds of the few into the char- 
acteristic of the whole class. 

The culmination of this system, its visible 
and emphatic symbol, fastened on Paris like a 
great bloated tumour eating into the heart of 
France, was Versailles. But compared with 
class privilege, the Church, and the seigneur, 
Versailles was a recent phenomenon, invented 
by Louis XIV little more than one hundred 
years before the outbreak of the Revolution. 
At the beginning of the 17th century the 
French monarchy had somewhat suddenly 
emerged from the wars of religion immensely 
strengthened. Able statesmen, Henry IV, 
Sully, Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV, had 
brought it out of its struggle with the feudal 
aristocracy triumphant. Before the wars of 
religion began the French noble was still me- 
diaeval in that he belonged to a caste of military 
specialists and that his provincial castle was 
both his residence and his stronghold. The 
struggle itself was maintained largely by his 
efforts, by the military and political power of 
great nobles. Guises, Montmorencys and others. 
But when the struggle closes, both religion, 
its cause, and the great noble its supporter, 
sink somewhat into the background, while the 
king, the kingly power, fills the eye. And 



14 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the new divine right monarchy, triumphant 
over the feudal soldier and gladly accepted as 
the restorer of order by the middle class, sets 
to work to consolidate this success; the result 
is Versailles. 

The spectacular palace built by Louis XIV 
threw glamour and prestige about the trium- 
phant monarchy. It drew the great nobles 
from their castles and peasantry, and converted 
them into courtiers, functionaries and office 
holders. To catch a ray of royal favour was 
to secure the gilt edging of distinction, and 
so even the literature, the theology, the intellect 
of France, quickly learned to revolve about the 
dazzling Sun King of Versailles, Louis XIV. 

Versailles could not, however, long retain 
such elements of vitality as it possessed. It 
rapidly accomplished its work on the feudal 
aristocracy, but only at a great price. With 
Louis XIV gone, it began to crumble from 
corruption within, from criticism without. 
Louis XV converted the palace into the most 
gorgeous of brothels, and its inmates into the 
most contemptible and degraded of harlots 
and pimps. The policy of France, still royal 
under Louis XIV, was marked by the greed, 
lewdness and incapacity of Richelieu and 
Dubois, of Pompadour and du Barry. When 



VERSAILLES 15 

the effluvious corpse of Louis XV was hastily 
smuggled from Versailles to the Cathedral of 
St. Denis in 1774, that seemed to mark the 
final dissolution into rottenness of the Bourbon- 
Versailles regime. That regime already stank 
in the nostrils of public opinion, a new 
force which for half a century past had been 
making rapid progress in France. 

The great religious and military struggle 
of the 1 6th and 17th centuries had in one di- 
rection resulted in enhancing the prestige and 
crystallizing the power of the French mon- 
archy. In another direction it had resulted 
in establishing even more firmly the new intel- 
lectual position of Europe, the spirit of enquiry, 
of criticism, of freedom of thought. The Ro- 
man or supreme doctrine of authority had been 
questioned, and questioned successfully. It 
could not be long before the doctrine of Bour- 
bon authority must also be questioned. Even 
if French thought and literature did for a 
moment pay tribute at the throne of Louis XIV 
the closing years of the century were marked 
by the names of Leibnitz, Bayle and Newton; 
the mercurial intelligence of France could not 
long remain stagnant with such forces as these 
casting their influence over European civiliza- 
tion. 



i6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The new century was not long in, the Regent 
PhiHp of Orleans had not long been in power, 
before France showed that Versailles had 
ceased to control her literature. A new Ra- 
belais with an i8th century lisp, Montesquieu, 
by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a 
sauce piquante compounded of indecency and 
style, succeeded in making the public swallow 
some incendiary morsels. The King of 
France, he declared, drew his power from the 
vanity of his subjects, while the Pope was ''an 
old idol to whom incense is offered from sheer 
habit"; nothing stronger has been said to this 
day. A few years later, in his Esprit des Lois, 
he produced a work of European reputation 
which eventually proved one of the main chan- 
nels for the conveyance of English constitu- 
tional ideas to the thinking classes of France 

An even greater influence than Montesquieu 
was Voltaire. He exercised an irresistible 
fascination on the intellectual class by the un- 
rivalled lucidity and logic of his powerful yet 
witty prose. He carried common sense to the 
point of genius, threw the glamour of intellect 
over the materialism of his century, and always 
seized his pen most eagerly when a question 
of humanity and liberalism was at stake. He 
had weak sides, was materialistic in living as 



VERSAILLES 17 

in thinking, and had nothing of the martyr in 
his composition; yet, after his fashion, he bat- 
tled against obscurantism with all the zeal of 
a reformer. He was, in fact, the successor 
of Calvin. But since Calvin's day Protes- 
tantism had been almost extirpated in France, 
so that the gradual growth of the spirit of 
enquiry, still proceeding below the surface, had 
brought it to a point beyond Protestantism. It 
was atheism that Voltaire stood for, and with 
the vast majority of the people of France from 
that day to this the alternative lay between 
rigid Catholicism on one hand and rigid 
atheism on the other. The innumerable shades 
of transition between these extremes, in which 
English and German Protestantism opened a 
pioneer track, remained a sealed book for them. 
In his Letters on the English, published in 
1734, Voltaire dwells less on constitutional 
than on religious questions. Liberty of con- 
science is what he struggles for, and he discerns 
not only that it is more prudent to attack the 
Church than the State but that it is more es- 
sential; religion is at the root of the mon- 
archical system even if the i8th century ruler is 
apt to forget it. And the Church gives Vol- 
taire ample opportunity for attack. The 
bishops and court abbes are often enough 



i8 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

sceptics and libertines, though every once in a 
while they turn and deal a furious blow to 
maintain the prestige and discipline of their 
ancient corporation. And when, for a few 
blasphemous words, they send a boy like the 
Chevalier de La Barre to the scaffold, to be 
mutilated and killed, Voltaire's voice rings 
out with the full reverberation of outraged 
humanity and civilization: Ecrasez V infdme! 
He believed that the Revolution, which he like 
so many others foresaw, would begin by an at- 
tack on the priests. It was the natural error 
of a thinker, a man of letters, concerned more 
with ideas than facts, with theology than 
economics. 

Above all things, Voltaire stood out as a 
realist, in the modern sense of the word, and 
if he detested the Church it was largely because 
it represented untruth. He did not deflect 
opinion to the same extent as his great con- 
temporary Rousseau, but he represented it 
more ; and of the men of the Revolution, it was 
Robespierre, who reigned less than four 
months, who stood for Rousseau, while Bona- 
parte, who reigned fourteen years, was the 
true Voltairian. 

Just at the side of Voltaire stood the Ency- 
clopedists, led by Diderot and d'Alembert. The 



VERSAILLES 19 

great work of reference which they issued 
penetrated into every intellectual circle, not 
only of France but of Europe, and brought 
with it the doctrines of materialism and athe- 
ism. However much they might be saturated 
with the ideas of Church and State in the Ro- 
man-Bourbon form, many of its readers be- 
came unconsciously shaken in their fundamen- 
tal beliefs, and ready to question, to criticize 
and, when the edifice began to tremble, to ac- 
cept the Revolution and the doctrine of the 
rights of the common man. 

Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, were at heart 
essentially aristocrats; for them the common 
man was an untrustworthy brute of low in- 
stincts, and their revolution would have meant 
the displacement of an aristocracy of the sword 
by an aristocracy of the intellect. Rousseau 
stood for the opposite view. To him it was 
only despotism that degraded man. Remove 
the evil conditions and the common man would 
quickly display his inherent goodness and 
amiability; tenderness to our fellows, or fra- 
ternity, was therefore the distinctive trait of 
manhood. The irrepressible exuberance of 
Rousseau's kindliness overflowed from his nov- 
els and essays into a great stream of fash- 
ionable sensibility. During the years of ter- 



20 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

rific stress that followed, during the butcheries 
of the guillotine and of the Grande Armee, 
it was the vogue to be soft-hearted, and even 
such a fire eater as Murat would pour li- 
bations of tears over his friends' waistcoats at 
the slightest provocation. In his Contrat 
Social Rousseau postulated the essential 
equality of the governor and the governed. 
But his sentimental attitude towards man in- 
volved a corresponding one towards the Deity; 
unable to accept Catholicism or even Christian- 
ity, he sought refuge from atheism in the arms 
of the Etre Supreme. It was this Supreme 
Being of Rousseau that was to become the 
official deity of France during the last days of 
the Reign of Terror. 

An influence of a slightly different sort to 
that exercised by these writers was that of the 
theatre. The century h^d seen the rise of the 
middle-class man, and his attempts at self ex- 
pression. The coffee-house and the Free- 
mason's lodge gave facilities for conversa- 
tion, discussion, opinion; and the increasing 
number of gazettes supplied these circles with 
information as to the course of political events. 
But the gazettes themselves might not venture 
into the danger-marked field of opinion, and 
for the fast growing public, especially in the 



VERSAILLES 21 

city of Paris, there was no opportunity for com- 
ment or criticism on the events of the day. 
In a tentative way the theatre proved itself 
a possible medium. In 1730, Voltaire pro- 
duced his tragedy Brutus, It fell fiat because 
of the lines 

. . . et je porte en mon coeur 

La liberte gravee et les rois en horreur. 

The audience was too loyal to Bourbonism 
to accept these sentiments; there were loud 
murmurs; and Brutus had to be withdrawn. 
As late as 1766, a play on the subject of 
William Tell was given to an empty house ; no 
one would go to see a republican hero. But 
from the sixties matters changed rapidly. 
Audiences show great enthusiasm over rivalries 
of art, of actors, of authors, of opinions, and 
every once in a while applaud or boo a senti- 
ment that touches the sacred foundations of 
the social and political order. At last an 
author appears on the scene, keen, witty, un- 
scrupulous, resourceful, to seize on this grow- 
ing mood of the public and to play on it for his 
own glory and profit. 

Beaumarchais, Mirabeau, Dumouriez, Bona- 
parte, these are the types of the adventurers 
of the Revolution, and the first only belongs 



22 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to the period of incubation and also to the do- 
main of letters. Thrown into the war of 
American independence by his double vocation 
of secret diplomatic agent and speculator in 
war supplies, he had espoused the cause of the 
American people with an enthusiasm that al- 
ways blazed most brightly when a personal in- 
terest was at stake. His enthusiasm for 
American liberty was easily converted into en- 
thusiasm for the liberty of his own class, and 
to vindicate that, he put Figaro on the stage. 
The first public performance of the Noces de 
Figaro, in 1784, was the culmination of a three 
years' struggle. Louis XVI had declared the 
play subversive, and the author had raised a 
storm of protest in its behalf. A special per- 
formance was conceded for the Court ; and the 
Parisian public, irritated at being thus ex- 
cluded, then raised for the first time the cry 
of tyranny and oppression. When at last the 
Government in its weakness made the final con- 
cession, and permitted a public performance, 
the demand for seats was greater than had 
ever previously been known. The theatre was 
packed. Great lords and ladies sat elbow to 
elbow with bourgeois and fashionable women; 
and when Figaro came on and declaimed 
against social injustice, the opposite parties in 



VERSAILLES 23 

the house stormed approval or disfavour. 
Figaro is Beaumarchais, is the lower or middle 
class man, with nothing but his wits with which 
to force his way through the barriers which 
privilege has erected across every path along 
which he attempts to advance. As the valet 
of Count Almaviva he has seen the man of 
privilege at close quarters and has sounded 
his rottenness and incapacity. Because you 
are a grand seigneur, he says, you think your- 
self a great genius; hut. Monsieur le Comte, 
to what do you really owe your great privi- 
leges? To having put yourself to the incon- 
venience of being born, nothing more. I, with 
all my ability and force, I who can work for 
myself, for others, for my country, I am driven 
away from every occupation. 

That was what the pushing adventurer and 
witty dramiatist had to say, but all through the 
country thousands of plain, inconspicuous men, 
doctors, lawyers, merchants, farmers, even 
here and there a peasant or a noble, the best 
representatives of the deep-rooted civilization 
of France, of her keen intelligence, of her up- 
rightness, of her humanity, revolted inwardly 
at the ineptitude and injustice of her govern- 
ment. As they saw it, the whole system 
seemed to revolve about Versailles, the abode 



24 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the Bourbon King, the happy hunting 
ground of the privileged courtier, the ghtter- 
ing abode of vice and debauchery, the sink 
through which countless millions were con- 
stantly drained while the poor starved, the 
badge of dishonour and incapacity which had 
too frequently been attached to the conduct of 
France both in war and in peace. The twenty- 
five millions without the gates gazed at the 
hundred thousand witi/in, and the more they 
gazed the louder and mwre bitter became their 
comment, the dimmer and the more tawdry 
did the glitter of it all appear to them, and the 
weaker and more half-hearted became the at- 
titude of the one hundred thousand as they 
attempted by insolence and superciliousness to 
maintain the pose of their inherited superiority. 



CHAPTER III 

ECONOMIC CRISIS 

EyEN under such conditions the Bourbon 
monarchy might have survived much 
longer had it not failed badly at one 
specific point. L^apoleon himself declared that 
it was in its financial management that the 
ancien regime had broken down ; and although 
for a long period historians chose to accentu- 
ate the political and social aspects of the Rev- 
olution, of recent years the economic has been 
the point of emphasis. And it was to consider 
a financial problem that the States-General 
were summoned in 1789 ; while most of the riots 
that broke out in Paris that same year were 
due to scarcity of ioodJ 

The editors of the Encyclopaedia had not 
neglected economic questions, and had given 
much employment to a number of writers who 
ranked as Economists or as Physiocrats. 
Among the men most interested in such ques- 
tions were Quesnay, the physician of Madame 
de Pompadour ; Turgot, the ablest minister of 

25 



26 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Louis XVI, and the Marquis de Mirabeau, 
father of a more famous son. They concerned 
themselves, among other things, with theories 
of agriculture largely based on the conditions 
of their country. iy\fith her large population 
France could with difficulty produce sufficient 
food for her people. The wheat which she 
did produce was brought to market under ex- 
tremely bad conditions of distribution and of 
payment. The century witnessed what ap- 
peared to be an endless succession of short 
crops and consequent famine. Viewing these 
conditions as a whole, the economic thinkers 
concluded that the foundations of the State 
must repose on agriculture, and they quickly 
voiced a demand that there should be encour- 
agement for the production of wheat and free 
circulation. 

Towards the end of the reign of Louis XV 
the effect of these economic doctrines began to 
be felt. Several efforts were made to remove 
the restrictions on the circulation of wheat. 
These efforts, however, proved unavailing until 
after the meeting of the States-General, and 
that largely because of' the powerful interests 
that were concerned in maintaining the wheat 
question as it then existed. The conditions 
were curious and are of great importance in 



ECONOMIC CRISIS 27 

their relation to the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion^ 

Wheat had become the great medium of fi- 
nancial speculation. It was an article that 
came on the market at a stated period in large 
quantities, though in quantities which experi- 
ence showed were rarely sufficient to meet the 
requirements of the succeeding twelve months. 
The capitalist who could pay cash for it, and 
who had the means of storing it, was therefore 
nearly certain of a moderate profit, and, if 
famine occurred, of an extravagant one. That 
capitalist of necessity belonged to the priv- 
ileged classes. Frequently religious communi- 
ties embarked in these ventures, and used 
their commodious buildings as granaries. Syn- 
dicates were formed in which all varieties of 
speculators entered, from the bourgeois shop- 
keeper of the provincial town to the courtier 
and even the King. But popular resentment, 
the bitter cry of the starving, applied the same 
name to all of them : from Louis XV to the in- 
conspicuous monk they were all accapareiirs 
de hie, cornerers of wheat. And their profits 
rose as did hunger and starvation. The com- 
putation has been put forward that in the year 
1789 one-half of the population of France had 
known from experience the meaning of the 



28 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

word hunger; can it be wondered if the curse 
of a whole people was attached to any man of 
whom it might be said that he was an accapa- 
reur de hlef 

The privileged person, king or seigneur, 
bishop or abbot, levied feudal dues along the 
roads and waterways, so that a boatload of wine 
proceeding from Provence to Paris was made 
to pay toll no less than forty times en route. 
He owned the right of sitting as judge in town 
or village, and of commanding the armed force 
that made judgment effective. Where he did 
not own the freehold of the farm, he held op- 
pressive feudal rights over it, and in the last 
resort reappeared in official guise as one of an 
army of officials whose chief duty it was not 
so much to ensure justice, good government, or 
local improvement, as to screw more money 
out of the taxpayer. Chief of all these officials 
were the King's intendants, working under 
the authority of the Controleur-General des Fi- 
nances. 

The Controleur was the most important of 
the King's ministers, and had charge of nearly 
all the internal administration of the kingdom. 
He not only collected the revenue, but had 
gradually subordinated every other function 
of government to that one. So he took charge 



ECONOMIC CRISIS 29 

of public works, of commerce and of agricul- 
ture, and directed the operations of an army of 
police, judicial and military officials — and all 
for the more splendid maintenance of Ve'r- 
sailles, Trianon, and the courtiers. 

In the provinces he was represented by the 
intendant. This official's duties varied to a 
certain extent with his district or generalite. 
In administration France showed the tran- 
sition that was proceeding from feudalism to 
centralized monarchism. Provinces had been 
acquired one by one, and many of them still 
retained local privileges. Of these the chief 
was that of holding ^provincial Estates, and 
where this custom prevailed, the chief duty of 
the Estates lay in the assessment of taxes. 
Where the province was not pays d' etat, it was 
the intendant who distributed the taxation. 
He enforced its collection; directed the mare- 
chaiissee, or local police; sat in judgment when 
disorder broke out; levied the militia, and en- 
forced roadmaking by the corvee. Thirty in- 
tendants ruled France ; and the modern system 
with its prefects is merely a slight modification 
devised by Napoleon on the great centralizing 
and administrative scheme of the Bourbon 
monarchy. 

The taxes formed a somewhat complicated 



30 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

system, but they may, for the present purpose, 
be grouped as follows : taxes that were farmed ; 
direct taxes; the gabelle; feudal and ecclesi- 
astical taxes. 

In 1697 had begun the practice of leasing 
indirect taxes for the space of six years to 
contractors, the fermiers generaux. They 
paid in advance, and recouped themselves by 
grinding the taxpayer to the uttermost. They 
defrauded the public in such monopolies as that 
of tobacco, which was grossly adulterated ; and 
they enforced payments not only with harsh- 
ness and violence, but with complete disregard 
for the ruin which their exactions entailed. 
The government increased the yield of the 
ferme in a little less than a century from 37 
to 180 millions of livres or francs,^ and yet 
the sixty farmers continued to increase in 
wealth. They formed the most conspicuous 
group of plutocrats when the Revolution broke 
out and were among the first victims of popular 
indignation. Of the direct taxes the most im- 
portant in every way was the taille. It brought 
in under Louis XVI about 90 millions of 
francs. It represented historically the funda- 
mental right of the French monarch to tax his 

1 The franc comes into use at the period of the Revolution. 
It will be employed throughout instead of livres as the stand- 
ard denomination. 



ECONOMIC CRISIS 31 



\ 



subjects delegated to him by the Estates of the 
kingdom in the isth century. By virtue of that 
delegated power it was the Royal Council 
that settled each year what amount of taille 
should be levied. It was enforced harshly and 
in such a manner as to discourage land im- 
provement. It was also the badge of social in- 
feriority, for in the course of centuries a large 
part of the wealthier middle classes had bought 
or bargained themselves out of the tax, so that 
to pay it was a certain mark of the lower 
class or roture, Taillahle, roturieTj were terms 
of social ostracism impatiently borne by thou- 
sands. 

Other direct taxes were the capitation, 
bringing in over 50 millions, the dixieme, the 
don gratuit. But more important than any 
of these was the great Government indirect 
tax, the monopoly on salt, or gahelle. Exemp- 
tions of all sorts made the price vary in differ- 
ent parts of France, but in some cases as much 
as 60 francs was charged for the annual quan- 
tity which the individual was assessed at, that 
same individual as often as not earning less 
than 5 francs a week. So much smuggling, 
fraud and resistance to the law did the gabellc 
produce that it took 50,000 officials, police and 
soldiers, to work it. In the year 1783 no less 



32 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

than ii,ooo persons, many of them women and 
children, were arrested for infraction of the 
gabelle laws. 

Last of all, the tithe and feudal dues were 
added to the burden. The priest was main- 
tained by the land. The seigneur's rights were 
numerous, and varied in different parts of the 
country. They bore most heavily in the cen- 
tral and northeastern parts of France, most 
lightly in the south, where Roman law had 
prevailed over feudal, and along most of the 
Atlantic coast line, as in Normandy. These 
feudal dues will be noticed later in connection 
with the famous session of the States-General 
on the 4th of August, 1789. 

In all this system of taxation there was only 
one rule that was of universal application, and 
that was that the burden should be thrown on 
the poor man's shoulders. The clergy had 
compounded with the Crown. The nobles or 
officials were the assessors, and whether they 
officiated for the King, for the Provincial Es- 
tates or for themselves, they took good care 
that their own contributions to the royal chest 
should be even less proportionately than might 
legally be demanded of them. And after all 
the money had been driven into the treasury 
it was but too painfully evident what became 



ECONOMIC CRISIS 33 

of it. The fermiers and the favourites scram- 
bled for the milHons and flaunted their splen- 
dour in the face of those who paid for it. 
The extravagance of the Court was equalled 
only by its ineptitude. No proper accounts 
were kept, because all but the taxpayers found 
their interest in squandering. Under Madame 
de Pompadour the practice arose that orders 
for money payments signed by the King alone 
should be paid in cash and not passed through 
the audit chamber, such as it was. Pensions 
became a serious drain on the revenue and 
rapidly grew to over 50 millions a year at 
the end of the reign of Louis XVI. They were 
not infrequently granted for ridiculous or 
scandalous reasons, as in the case of Ducrest, 
hairdresser to the eldest daughter of the Com- 
tesse d' Artois, who was granted an annual 
pension of 1,700 francs on her death; the child 
was then twelve months old; or that of a 
servant of the actress Clairon, who was 
brought into the CEuil de Boeuf one morning 
to tell Louis XV a doubtful story about his 
mistress; the King laughed so much that he 
ordered the fellow to be put down for a pen- 
sion of 600 francs! 

With its finances in such condition the Bour- 
bon monarchy plunged into war with England 



34 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

in 1778, and, for the satisfaction of Yorktown 
and the independence of the United States, 
spent 1,500 millions of francs, nearly four 
years' revenue. At that moment it was esti- 
mated that the people of France paid in tax- 
ation about 800 millions annually, about 
one-half of which reached the King's chest. 
But the burden of debt was so great that by 
1789, nearly 250 millions were paid out an- 
nually for interest. 

To meet this situation the Government tried 
many men and many measures. There were 
several partial repudiations of debt. The 
money was clipped, much to the profit of im- 
porters from Amsterdam and other centres of 
thrift. Necker made way for Calonne, and 
Calonne for Necker. But these names bring 
us to the current of events that resulted in the 
convocation of the States-General by Louis 
XVI, and that must be made the subject of 
another chapter. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONVOCATION OF THE STATES-GENERAL 

LOUIS XVI, grandson of Louis XV, 
came to the throne in 1774. He 
showed some, but not all, of the char- 
acteristics of his family. He was of sluggish 
intelligence, and extremely slow, not to say 
embarrassed, in speech. He was heavy in 
build and in features. His two great interests 
were locksmithing, which he had learned as 
a boy, and running the deer and the boar in 
the great royal forests, St. Germain, Fon- 
tainebleau, Rambouillet. He had all the Bour- 
bon insouciance, and would break off an im- 
portant discussion of the Council from indif- 
ference, incompetence, or impatience, to go off 
hunting. Worst of all, for an autocrat, he 
had not in his nature one particle of those quali- 
ties that go to make up the man of action, 
decision, energy, courage, whole-heartedness. 
In this he represented the decay of his race, 
surfeited with power, victim of the system it 

35 



36 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

had struggled so long and so hard to establish. 
At the best he had flashes of common sense, 
which, unfortunately for himself, he was never 
capable of translating into deeds. He was full 
of good intentions, of a certain underlying 
honesty and benevolence, all rather obscured 
by his boorish exterior and manners. Like 
his ancestors, he ate and drank voraciously, 
but, unlike them, he did not care for women. 
He even showed some indifference for his wife 
at first, but later, when she bore children, he 
appeared to the public in the character of a 
good father of the family. In that and some 
of his other traits he had elements of popu- 
larity, and he remained in a way popular al- 
most to the moment of his trial in 1792. 

Marie Antoinette of Austria, his wife, was 
of very different mould; and in her everything 
made for unpopularity. She had begun under 
the worst auspices. The French public de- 
tested the Austrian alliance into which Ma- 
dame de Pompadour had dragged France, and 
had felt the smart of national disgrace during 
the Seven Years' War, so that a marriage into 
the Hapsburg-Lorraine family after the con- 
clusion of that war, was very ill received. To 
make the matter worse a catastrophe marked 
the wedding ceremonies, and at a great illumi- 



THE STATES-GENERAL 37 

nation given by the city of Paris, a stampede 
occurred, in which hundreds of hves were lost. 
The Austrian princess, /' Aiitrichieiine, as she 
was called from the first, did not mend matters 
by her conduct. Until misfortune sobered her 
and brought out her stronger and better side, 
she was incurably light-headed and frivolous. 
She was always on the very edge of a faux pas, 
and her enemies did not fail to accuse her of 
frequent slips beyond the edge. The titled 
riffraff that had adorned the Louis XV-du 
Barry court was swept out on the accession of 
the young Queen, but only to be replaced by 
a new clique as greedy as the old, and not 
vastly more edifying. Richelieu and d' Aiguil- 
lon only made way for Lauzun, the Polignacs, 
and Vaudreuil. And if it was an improvement 
to have a high-born queen rule Versailles in- 
stead of a low-born courtesan, the difference 
was not great in the matter of outward dignity, 
and especially of the expenditure of public 
money. Millions that cannot be computed for 
lack of proper accounts were poured out for 
the Queen's amusements and for the Queen's 
favourites, men and women. 

It was the Controleur whose function was to 
fill the Court's bottomless purse. Under this 
strain and that of the American war, a man of 



38 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

humble origin but of good repute as an econo- 
mist and accountant was called to the office, the 
Geneva banker, Jacques Necker. For three 
years he attempted to carry the burden of the 
war by small economies effected at many 
points, which produced the minimum of result 
with the maximum of friction. Finally, in 
1 78 1, the Queen drove him from office. 
Necker himself provided the excuse by the 
publication of his Compte rendu, a pamphlet 
which first put the financial crisis fairly before 
the public. 

All that the public knew up to this time was 
that while the Court maintained its splendour 
and extravagance, the economic and finan- 
cial situation was rapidly getting worse. 
There was no systematic audit, there was no 
budget, there was no annual account published, 
so that the finances remained a sealed book, a 
private matter concerning the King of France 
only.' But here, in Necker's pamphlet, was an 
account of those finances, that revealed to a 
certain extent the state of affairs, and, which 
was even more important, that constituted an 
appeal to the public to judge the King's ad- 
ministration. Louis was furious at his min- 
ister's step, and not only dismissed him, but 
banished him from Paris. 



THE STATES-GENERAL 39 

From 1783 to 1787 the finances were in the 
hands of Calonne, whose management proved 
decisive and fatal. His dominant idea was 
that of a courtier, — always to honour any de- 
mand made on the treasury by the King or 
Queen. To do less would be unworthy of a 
gentilhomme and a devoted servant of their 
Majesties. So Calonne, bowing gracefully, 
smiling reassuringly, embarked on a fatal 
course, borrowing where he could, anticipating 
in one direction, defaulting in another, but al- 
ways, and somehow, producing the louis neces- 
sary to the enjoyment of the present moment. 
He reached the end of his tether towards the 
close of 1786. 

It was during Calonne's administration that 
occurred the famous affair of the diamond 
necklace. It was a vulgar swindle worked on 
the Cardinal de Rohan by an adventuress, 
Mme. de La Motte Valois. Trading on his 
credulity and court ambitions, she persuaded 
him to purchase a diamond necklace, which the 
Queen, so he was told, greatly wished but could 
not afford. Marie Antoinette was personated 
in a secret interview given to Rohan, and Mme. 
de La Motte got possession of the diamonds. 
Presently the jewellers began to press Rohan 
for payment, and the secret came out. The 



40 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

King was furious, and sent Rohan to the royal 
prison of the Bastille, while Mme. de La Motte 
was handed over to the legal procedure of the 
Parlement of Paris. 

This incident created great excitement, and 
was much distorted by public report. It left 
two lasting impressions, one relating to Mme. 
de La Motte, the other to the Queen. The 
adventuress was too obvious a scapegoat to be 
spared. While Rohan was allowed to leave 
the Bastille after a short imprisonment, the 
woman was brought to trial, and was sentenced 
to public whipping and branding. Her exe- 
cution was carried out in bungling fashion, 
and at the foot of the steps leading to the law 
courts, whence Danton's voice was to reverbe- 
rate so loudly in his struggle with so-called 
Justice ten years later, a disgraceful scene 
occurred. The crowd saw La Motte strug- 
gling in the hands of the executioners and roll- 
ing with them in the gutter, heard her uttering 
loud shrieks as the branding iron was at last 
applied to her shoulders. The impression pro- 
duced by this revolting spectacle was profound, 
and was heightened by the universal belief 
that Marie Antoinette was not less guilty in 
one direction than Madame de La Motte had 
been in another. The outbreak of slander and 



THE STATES-GENERAL 41 

of libel against the Queen goes on accumulating 
from this moment with ever-increasing force 
until her death, eight years later. A legend 
comes into existence, becomes blacker and 
blacker, and culminates in the atrocious ac- 
cusations made against her by Hebert before 
the Revolutionary Tribunal; Messalina and 
Semiramis are rolled into one to supply a fit 
basis of comparison. And the population of 
Paris broods over this legend, and when revo- 
lution comes, makes of Marie Antoinette the 
symbol of all that is monstrous, infamous and 
cruel in the system of the Bourbons; makes of 
her the marked victim of the vengeance of the 
people. 

Meanwhile Calonne was struggling to keep 
his head above water, and in the process had 
come into conflict with the Parlements, or cor- 
porations of judges. At last, in 1786, he went 
to the King, admitted that he had no money, 
that he could borrow no more, and that the 
only hope lay in fundamental reform. He 
proposed, therefore, a number of measures, of 
which the most important were that money 
should be raised by a stamp tax, that a land tax 
should be the foundation of the revenue, and 
that it should apply to all proprietors, noble, 
cleric, and of the Third Estate, with no excep- 



42 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

tions. There was no chance, however, as 
matters stood, of persuading the Parlements to 
register decrees for these purposes, so Calonne 
proposed that the King should summon an as- 
sembly of the notables of France to give their 
support to these reforms. Here again, al- 
though Calonne and Louis did not realize it, 
was an appeal to public opinion ; the monarchy 
was unconsciously following the lead of the 
philosophers, of the dramatists, and of Necker. 
In January, -^788^ the Notables assembled, 
"to learn the King's intentions,'' one hundred 
and fifty of them, mostly nobles and official 
persons. In February Calonne put his scheme 
before them, and then discovered, to his great 
astonishment, that they declined to give him 
the support, which was all he wanted of them, 
and that, on the contrary, they wished to dis- 
cuss his project, and, in fact, held a very ad- 
verse opinion of it. In this the Notables were 
not factious ; they merely had enough sense of 
the gravity of the situation to perceive that a 
real remedy was needed, and that Calonne's 
proposal did not supply it. His idea was good 
enough in the abstract, but in practice there 
was at least one insurmountable objection, 
which was that the land tax could not be estab- 
lished until a cadastral survey of France had 



THE STATES-GENERAL 43 

been undertaken — a complicated and lengthy 
operation. Very soon Calonne and the Nota- 
bles had embarked on a contest that gradually 
became heated, until finally Calonne appealed 
from the Notables to the public by printing 
and circulating his proposals. The Notables 
replied by a protest, and declared that the real 
reform was economy and that the Controleur 
should place before them proper accounts. 
This proved the end of Calonne, his position 
had long been weak, he now toppled over, and 
was replaced by Lomenie de Brienne, Arch- 
bishop of Toulouse. 

Lomenie was an agreeable courtier, and well 
liked by the Queen, but he was also a liberal, 
an encyclopedist, and a member of the Assem- 
bly of Notables. He succeeded in getting the 
approval of that body for a loan of 60,000,000 
francs, and then, on the ist of May, 1787, 
dissolved it. The new minister had, however, 
come to the opinion that his predecessor's pro- 
gramme was the only possible one, and as soon 
as he had got rid of the Notables, his late col- 
leagues, he attempted to get the Parlement of 
Paris to register the new laws. 

The Parlement resisted; and popular dis- 
content became a serious feature of the situ- 
ation. The Chancellor, Lamoignon, was burnt 



44 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

in tffigy by the mob. In July, 1787, the Parle- 
ment of Paris demanded that the States-Gen- 
eral of the kingdom should be assembled. For 
a whole year the struggle between the judges 
and the ministers grew hotter and hotter. The 
arrest of d' Espremenil, one of the leaders of 
the Parlement, in May, 1788, led to severe 
rioting in Paris, and only the energetic use of 
police and troops saved the situation. Not 
only did the provincial Parlements support that 
of Paris in its resistance to the Court, but the 
provinces themselves began to stir, and finally, 
a month after d' Espremenil's arrest, a large 
meeting at Grenoble decided to call together 
the old Estates of the province, the province of 
Dauphine. 

This was almost civil war, and threatened 
to plunge France back into the conditions of 
two centuries earlier. The Government or- 
dered troops to Grenoble to put down the move- 
ment. The commanding general, however, on 
arriving near the city, found the situation so 
alarming that he agreed to a compromise, 
whereby the Estates were to hold a meeting, 
but not in the capital of the province. Accord- 
ingly, at the village of Vizille, on the 21st of 
July, several hundred persons assembled, rep- 
resenting the three orders, nobility, clergy, and 



THE STATES-GENERAL 45 

Third Estate of the province; and of these it 
had been previously agreed that the Third Es- 
tate should be allowed double representation. 

The leading figure of the assembly of Vizille 
was Jean Joseph Mounier. He was a middle 
class man, a lawyer, upright, intelligent, yet 
moderate, who felt the need of reform, and 
who was prepared to labour for it. He in- 
spired all the proceedings at Vizille, and as 
secretary of the Estates, had the chief part in 
drawing up its resolutions. These demanded 
the convocation of the States-General of 
France, pledged the province to refuse to pay 
all taxes not voted by the States-General, and 
called for the abolition of arbitrary imprison- 
ment on the King's order by the warrant 
known as the lettre de cachet. 

The effect of the resolutions of the assembly 
of Vizille through France was immediate. 
They were simple, direct, and voiced the gen- 
eral feeling; they also indicated that the mo- 
ment had come for interfering in the chronic 
mismanagement of affairs. So irresistible was 
their force that Lomenie de Brienne and the 
King accepted them with hardly a struggle. 
The minister was now at the end of his bor- 
rowing powers and in the month of August 
his tenure of power came to a close. Before 



46 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

leaving office he suspended payments, and is- 
sued a decree convoking the States-General for 
the 1st of May, 1789. He was succeeded by 
Necker. 

It v^as unfortunate for the Bourbon mon- 
archy that at this great crisis a king and 
a minister should have come together, both 
lacking initiative, both lacking courage, 
and yet not even sympathetic, but, on the 
contrary, lacking mutual confidence and 
refusing one another mutual support. And 
while Louis lacked executive vigour, so 
Necker tended always to lose himself in figures, 
in details, in words, in fine sentiments, and to 
neglect the essential for the unimportant. He 
was well intentioned but narrow, and merely 
followed the current of events. From all 
parts of France advice and representations 
reached him as to the conditions under which 
the States-General should be convoked. Their 
last meeting had been held as far back as 1614, 
so that there was naturally much uncertainty 
on questions of procedure. Partly to clear 
this, partly to find some support for his own 
timidity, Necker called the Notables together 
again. They met in November and helped to 
settle the conditions under which the elections 



THE STATES-GENERAL 47 

to the States-General and their convocation 
should take place. 

The old constitutional theory of the States- 
General was that it was an assembly of the 
whole French nation, represented by delegates, 
and divided into three classes. Thus it was 
tribal in that it comprised every Frenchman 
within its scope, and feudal in that it formed 
the caste distinctions, noble, clergy, people. 
In other words it afforded little ground for 
comparison with the English Parliament; the 
point at which it approached it nearest being 
in the matter of the power to vote the taxation 
levied by the Crown ; but this power the States- 
General had lost so far back as the 15th cen- 
tury. 

This fundamental conception entailed an- 
other, which was that the delegates of the na- 
tion were not members of a parliament or 
debating assembly, but were mere mandatories 
charged by the electors with a specific commis- 
sion, which was to place certain representations 
before the King. This meant that in the stage 
previous to the election of these delegates, the 
electors should draw up a statement of their 
complaints and a mandate or instructions for 
their representatives. This was in fact done, 



48 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and many thousands of cahiers, as they were 
called, were drawn up all over France, in which 
the demands of as many individuals, or corpora- 
tions, or bodies of electors were stated. These 
were summarized into three cahiers for each 
province, and eventually into three, one from 
each order, for all France, and these last three 
were in due course presented to Louis XVI. 

As a source of information on the economic 
and social condition of a country, the cahiers 
are the most wonderful collection of documents 
available for the historian. Many of them 
have been more or less faithfully published, and 
at the present day the French government is 
liberally helping on the work of making them 
public. But in a work of this scope it is im- 
possible to go at length into the state of affairs 
which they depict; only the most salient fea- 
tures can be dealt with. 

First, then, it must be said that the cahiers 
present at the same time remarkable uniform- 
ity and wide divergence. The agreement lies 
partly in their general spirit, and partly in 
the repetition of certain formulas preached 
throughout the country by eager pamphleteers 
and budding political leaders. The'divergence 
can be placed under three chief heads: the 
markedly different character of a great part 



THE STATES-GENERAL 49 

of the cahiers of the clergy from those of the 
other two orders; provincial divergence and 
peculiarities of local customs ; demands for the 
maintenance of local privileges. Of the last 
class, Marseilles, a port with many commercial 
and political privileges, affords perhaps the 
most extreme example. The uniformity is to 
be seen especially in the general spirit of these 
complamts to the King. One feels, while read- 
ing the cahiers, the unanimity of a long-suffer- 
ing people anxious for a release from intoler- 
able misgovernment, — more than that, anxious 
to have their institutions modernized, but all in 
a spirit of complete loyalty and devotion to the 
King and to all that was wise, and good, and 
glorious, and beneficent, that he still seemed to 
represent. The illusion of Bourbonism was 
at that moment, so far as surface appearances 
went, practically untouched. 

The noblesse and the clergy conducted their 
elections by means of small meetings and chose 
their delegates from among themselves. The 
Tiers Etat elected as its representatives men of 
the upper middle class and professional class; 
the lower classes, ignorant and politically un- 
tutored, were unrepresented and accepted tute- 
lage with more or less alacrity — more in the 
provinces, less in Paris. But in addition, a 



50 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

small number of men belonging to the privi- 
leged orders sought and obtained mandates 
from the lower. Sieyes and a few other 
priests, Mirabeau and a few other nobles, were 
elected to the States-General by the Third Es- 
tate. 

Sieyes, of powerful mind, a student of con- 
stitutionalism, terse and logical in expression, 
had made a mark during the electoral period 
with his pamphlet, Qu'est ce que le Tiers Etat? 
What is the Third Estate? His reply was: 
It is everything; it has been nothing; it 
should be something. This was a reasonable 
and forceful exposition of the views of the 
twenty-five millions. Mirabeau, of volcanic 
temperament and morals, with the instinct of 
a statesman and the conscience of an outlaw, 
greedy of power as of money, with thundering 
voice, ready rhetoric, and keen perception, 
turned from his own order to the people for his 
mandate. He saw clearly enough from the be- 
ginning that reform could not stop at financial 
changes, but must throw open the government 
of France to the large class of intelligent citi- 
zens with which her developed civilization had 
endowed her. 

The outstanding fact brought out by this in- 
filtration of the noblesse and clergy into the 



THE STATES-GENERAL 51 

Third Estate, was clear: the deputies to the 
States-General, whichever order they belonged 
to, were nearly all members of the educated 
middle and upper class of France. Part of the 
deputies of the noblesse stood for class privi- 
lege, and so did a somewhat larger part of 
those of the clergy. But a great number in 
both these orders were of the same sentiment 
aSi the deputies of the Third Estate. They 
were intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen, full 
of the teaching of Voltaire, and Rousseau, and 
Montesquieu, convinced by their eyes as well 
as by their intellect that Bourbonism must 
be reformed for its own sake, for the sake of 
France, and for the sake of humanity. 



CHAPTER V 

FRANCE COMES TO VERSAILLES 

AT the beginning of May, twelve hundred 
and fourteen representatives of France 
reached Versailles. Of these, six hun- 
dred and twenty-one, more than half, belonged 
to the Third Estate, and of the six hundred and 
twenty-one more than four hundred had some 
connection with the law, while less than forty 
belonged to the farming class. Little prepara- 
tion had been made for them ; the King had con- 
tinued to attend to his hounds and horses, the 
Queen to her balls and dresses, and Necker to 
his columns of figures, his hopes, and his illu- 
sions. But the arrival of this formidable body 
of men of trained intellect in the royal city, now 
that it had occurred, at once caused a certain 
uneasiness. As they walked about the city in 
curious groups, it was as though France were 
surveying the phenomenon of Versailles with 
critical eye ; at the very first occasion the court- 
iers, feeling this, set to work to teach the depu- 

52 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 53 

ties of the Third Estate a lesson, to put them 
in their place. 

On the 4th and 5th of May the opening cere- 
monies took place, processions, mass, a sermon, 
speeches; and the Court's policy, if such it 
could be called, was revealed. The powerful 
engine known as etiquette was brought into 
play, to indicate to the deputies what position 
and what influence in the State the King in- 
tended they should have. This was perhaps 
the greatest revelation of the inherent weakness 
of Bourbonism; the system had, in its decline, 
become little more than etiquette, and Louis 
XVI seen hard at work in his shirt-sleeves 
would have shattered the illusions of centuries. 
And so, by means of the myriad contrivances of 
masters of ceremonies and Court heralds the 
Third Estate was carefully made to feel its 
social inferiority, its political insignificance. 

The Third Estate noted these manifestations 
of the Court with due sobriety, and met the 
attack squarely. But while on the part of the 
Court this way of approaching the great 
national problem never attained a higher dig- 
nity than a policy of pin pricks, with the Third 
Estate it was at once converted into a consti- 
tutional question of fundamental importance. 
Was the distinction between the three orders 



54 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to be maintained? was the noble or priest a 
person of social and political privilege ? or were 
the deputies of all to meet in one assembly and 
have equal votes? That was the great ques- 
tion, as the Third Estate chose to state it, and, 
translated into historical terms, it meant no less 
than the passing of the feudal arrangement of 
society in separate castes into the new system 
of what is known at our day as democracy. 

Nearly all the cahiers of the Third Estate 
and many of those of the noblesse, had de- 
manded this measure, and the Third Estate 
on assembling to verify the mandates of its 
members immediately called on the other two 
orders to join it in this proceeding. The strug- 
gle over this point continued from the Sth of 
May to the 9th of June, before any decisive step 
was taken. But as the days went by, ap- 
parently in fruitless debate, there was in reality 
a constant displacement of influence going on 
in favor of the Third Estate. In the opening 
session the statement of affairs made by 
Necker had left a very poor impression. 
Since then the ministers had done nothing, 
save to attempt, by a feeble intervention, to 
keep the orders apart. And all the time the 
Third Estate was gradually becoming con- 
scious of its own strength and of the feebleness 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES SS 

of the adversary. And so at last, on the loth 
of June, Sieyes moved, Mirabeau supporting, 
that the noblesse and the clergy should be 
formally summoned to join the Tiers, and that 
on the 1 2th, verification of powers for the 
v^hole of the States-General should take place. 

Accordingly on the 12th, under the presi- 
dency of the astronomer Bailly, senior repre- 
sentative of the city of Paris, the Tiers began 
the verification of the deputies' mandates. On 
the 13th, three members of the clergy, three 
country priests, asked admission. They were 
received amid scenes of the greatest enthu- 
siasm, and within a few days their example 
proved widely contagious. On the 14th, a new 
step was taken, and the deputies, belonging 
now to a body that was clearly no longer the 
Tiers Etat, voted themselves a National As- 
sembly. This was, in a sense, accomplishing 
the Revolution. 

So rapidly did the Tiers now draw the other 
parts of the Assembly to itself that on the 19th, 
the Clergy formally voted for reunion. This 
brought the growing uneasiness and alarm of 
the Court to a head. Necker's influence was 
now on the wane. The King's youngest 
brother, the Comte d' Artois, at this moment on 
good terms with the Queen, and Marie Antoi- 



SG FRENCH REVOLUTION 

nette herself, were for putting an end to the 
mischief before it went further, and they pre- 
vailed. It was decided that the King should 
intervene, and should break up the States-Gen- 
eral into its component parts once more by an 
exercise of the royal authority. 

On the morning of the 20th of June, in a 
driving rain, the deputies arriving at their hall 
found the doors closed and workmen in pos- 
session. This was the contemptuous manner 
in which the Court chose to intimate to them 
that preparations were being made for a royal 
session which was to take place two days 
later. Alarmed and indignant, the deputies 
proceeded to the palace tennis court close 
by, — the Jen de Paume, — and there heated dis- 
cussion followed. Sieyes, for once in his 
career imprudent, proposed that the Assembly 
should remove to Paris. Mounier, conserva- 
tive at heart, realizing that this meant civil 
war, temporized, and carried the Assembly 
with him by proposing a solemn oath whereby 
those present would pledge themselves not to 
separate until they had endowed France with 
a constitution. 

On the 23rd, the royal session was held. A 
great display of troops and of ceremony was 
made. The deputies assembled in the hall, and 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 57 

the King's speech was read. It was a carefully 
prepared document, announcing noteworthy 
concessions as well as noteworthy reserva- 
tions, but vitiated by two things: the con- 
cessions came just too late; the reservations 
were not promptly and effectively enforced. 
The King declared that for two months past 
the States-General had accomplished nothing 
save wrangling, that the time had therefore 
arrived for recalling them to their duties. His 
royal will was that the distinction between the 
three orders should be maintained, and after 
announcing a number of financial and other re- 
forms, he ordered the deputies to separate at 
once. The King then left the hall supported by 
his attendants, and by the greater part of the 
nobles and high clergy. There followed a 
memorable scene, to understand which it is 
necessary to go back a little. 

On the arrival of the deputies at Versailles, 
they had at once tended to form themselves 
into groups, messes, or clubs, for eating, social 
and political purposes. An association of this 
kind, the Club Breton, so called from the prov- 
ince of its founders, soon assumed consider- 
able importance. Here the forward men of 
the assembly met and discussed; and here, 
filtering through innumerable channels, came 



58 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the news of the palace, the tittle tattle of Tria- 
non and the QEuil de Boeuf, the decisions of 
the King's council. At every crisis during the 
struggle at Versailles, the leaders of the as- 
sembly knew beforehand what the King and 
his ministers thought, and what measures they 
had decided on. All that was necessary there- 
fore was to concert secretly the step most likely 
to thwart the royal policy, and by eloquence, 
by persuasion, by entreaty, to cajole the great 
floating mass of members to follow the lead of 
the more active minds. The King's speech oh 
the 23rd of June was no surprise to the as- 
sembly, and the leaders were prepared with an 
effective rejoinder. 

So when Louis XVI left the hall after com- 
manding the deputies to disperse, the greater 
part of them kept their seats, and when Dreux 
Breze, Master of Ceremonies, noting this, 
called on the president to withdraw, Bailly re- 
plied that the assembly was in session and 
could not adjourn without a motion. The dis- 
cussion between Dreux Breze and Bailly con- 
tinuing, Mirabeau turned on the King's repre- 
sentative and in his thundering voice declaimed 
the famous speech, which he had doubtless 
prepared the night before. "We are here," he 
concluded, "by the will of the people, and we 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 59 

will only quit at the point of the bayonet/' 
At this de Breze withdrew and reported to 
the King for orders. But Louis had done 
enough for one day, and the only conclusion 
he could come to was that if the deputies re- 
fused to leave the hall, the best course would 
be for them to remain there. And there in fact 
they stayed. 

Immediately after this scene Necker sent in 
his resignation. On the morning of the 24th, 
this was known in Paris, and produced con- 
sternation and a run on the banks. To reas- 
sure the public, Necker was immediately re- 
instated, on the basis that Louis should accept, 
as now seemed inevitable, the fusion of the 
orders. On the 2Sth, a large group of nobles 
headed by the Due d' Orleans and the Comte 
de Clermont Tonnerre joined the assembly, and 
a week later the Assemblee Nationale was fully 
constituted, the three orders merged into one. 

During the two months through which this 
great constitutional struggle had lasted, the 
assembly had had a great moral force behind 
it, a moral force that was fast tending to be- 
come something more. The winter of 1788-89 
had been one of the most severe of the century. 
There had been not only the almost chronic 
shortage of bread, but weather of extraordi- 



6o FRENCH REVOLUTION 

nary rigour. In the city of Paris the Seine is 
reported to have been frozen soHd, while the 
suffering among its inhabitants was unpar- 
alleled. As an inevitable consequence of this 
riots broke out. In January there had been 
food riots in many parts of France that taxed 
severely the military resources of the Govern- 
ment. They continued during the electoral 
period, and were occasionally accompanied by 
great violence. And when the deputies as- 
sembled at Versailles there was behind them 
a great popular force, already half unloosed, 
that looked to the States-General for appease- 
ment or for guidance. 

The procedure which the Third Estate and 
National Assembly stumbled into, gave this 
popular force an opportunity for expressing 
itself. The public was admitted to the open- 
ing session, and it continued to come to those 
that followed. From the public galleries came 
the loudest sounds of applause that greeted the 
patriotic orator. The Parisian public quickly 
fell into the way of making the journey to Ver- 
sailles to join in these demonstrations, and soon 
transferred them from the hall of the assembly 
to the street outside. Mirabeau, Sieyes, Mou- 
nier, and other popular members were con- 
stantly receiving ovations — and soon learnt to 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 6i 

convert them into political weapons; while 
members who were suspected of reactionary 
tendencies, especially the higher clergy, met 
with hostile receptions. And all this, well 
known both to Court and assembly, was but 
a faint echo of the great force rumbling steadily 
twelve miles away in the city of Paris. 

The leaders of the assembly did not scruple 
to use this pressure of public opinion, of popu- 
lar violence, for all it was worth. And placed 
as they were it was not surprising that they 
should have done so. The deputies were only 
a small group of men in the great royal city 
garrisoned with all the traditions of the French 
royalty and 5,000 sabres and bayonets besides. 
It was natural that they should seek support 
then, even if that support meant violence, law- 
lessness or insurrection. 

Thus Paris encouraged the assembly, and 
the assembly Paris. The ferment in the capi- 
tal was reaching fever-heat just at the moment 
that the assembly had won its victory over the 
orders. The working classes were raging for 
food, the bankers, capitalists and merchants 
saw in the States-General the only hope of 
avoiding bankruptcy, the intellectual and pro- 
fessional class was more agitated than any 
other. The cafes and pamphlet shops of the 



62 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Palais Royal were daily more crowded, more 
excited. And on the 30th of June the army 
itself began to show symptoms of following the 
general movement. 

The regiment of French guards was a body 
of soldiers kept permanently quartered in the 
capital. The men were, therefore, in closer 
touch with the population than would be the 
case in ordinary regiments. Their command- 
ing officer at this moment was not only an 
aristocrat but a martinet, and he completely 
failed to keep his regiment in hand. Trouble 
had long been brewing in the ranks and cul- 
minated in mutiny and riot at the close of June. 
Making the most of the state of Paris many 
of the mutinous guardsmen took their liberty 
and refused to return to barracks. Clearly 
what between the accomplished revolt of the 
Third Estate, the incipient revolt of Paris, and 
the open mutiny of the troops, something had 
to be done. 

Necker's return to the Ministry had been 
imposed on the Court, and although his policy 
of accepting the fusion of the orders was fol- 
lowed, his influence really amounted to little. 
The Queen and the Comte d' Artois soon 
plucked up courage after their first defeat, and 
took up once more the policy of repression ; but 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 63 

as it was now apparently useless to attempt to 
stem the tide by means of speeches or decrees, 
they persuaded the King that force was the 
only means. By using the army he could get 
rid of Necker, get rid of the National Assem- 
bly, and reduce Paris to order. 

Accordingly the Marshal de Broglie, a vet- 
eran of the Seven Years' War, was put in 
charge of military matters, and an old Swiss 
officer, the Baron de Besenval, was placed in 
immediate command of the troops. Regiments 
were brought in from various quarters, and by 
the end of the first week of July the Court's 
measures were developing so fast, and appeared 
so dangerous, that the assembly passed a vote 
asking the King to withdraw the troops and 
to authorize the formation of a civic guard in 
Paris. The King's answer, delivered on the 
loth, was negative and peremptory; his troops 
were to be employed to put down disorder. 

At this crisis the action of the assembly and 
of Paris became more definitely concerted. 
The government of the city had been in the 
hands of a somewhat antiquated board pre- 
sided over by a provost of the merchants. It 
was too much out of touch with the existing 
movement to have any influence, and felt its 
impotence so keenly that it would willingly 



64 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

have resigned its power. At the time of the 
elections to the States-General the Government 
had broken up Paris into sixty electoral dis- 
tricts for the sake of avoiding the possibility 
of large meetings. These sections, as they 
were called, had formed committees, and these 
committees, towards the middle of June, had 
been coming together again informally and 
tending towards permanence. On the 23rd 
of that month, with disorder growing in the 
city, they had held a joint meeting at the Hotel 
de Ville, the town house, and the municipality 
had given them a permanent room there, hop- 
ing that their influence would help keep dis- 
order under. 

When, on the nth, the news reached Paris 
that Louis had refused the assembly's demand 
for the withdrawal of the troops, the central 
committee of the sections took matters into its 
hands and voted the formation of a civic guard 
for the city of Paris. On the same day the 
King, now ready to precipitate the crisis, dis- 
missed and exiled Necker, and called the re- 
actionary Breteuil to power. On the 12th, 
Paris broke out into open insurrection. 

It was Camille Desmoulins who set the 
torch to the powder. This young lawyer and 
pamphleteer, a brilliant writer, a generous 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 6s 

idealist, almost the only reasoned republican 
in Paris at that day, was one of the most popu- 
lar figures in the Palais Royal crowds. On the 
1 2th of July, standing on a cafe table, he an- 
nounced the news of the dismissal of Necker, 
the movement of the troops on Paris, and with 
passion and eloquence declaimed against the 
Government and called on all good citizens to 
take up arms. He headed a great procession 
from the Palais Royal to the Hotel de Ville. 
The move on the Hotel de Ville had for its 
object to procure arms. The committee of the 
sections had voted a civic guard, but a civic 
guard to act required muskets. The troops of 
Besenval were now pressing in on the city, and 
had nearly encircled it. In a few hours Paris, 
always hungry, might be reduced to famine, 
and the troops might be pouring volleys down 
the streets. The soldiers of the French guards, 
siding with the people, were already skirmish- 
ing with the Germans of the King's regiments, 
for the army operating against Paris was more 
foreign than French, and the Swiss and Ger- 
man regiments were placed at the head of the 
columns for fear the French soldiers would 
not fire on the citizens. Royal-Etranger, 
Reinach, Nassau, Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand, 
Royal-Cravate, Diesbach, such were some of 



66 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the names of the regiments sent by Louis XVI 
to persuade his good people of Paris into sub- 
mission. No wonder that the crowd shouted 
when DesmouHns told them that the Germans 
would sack Paris that night if they did not 
defend themselves. 

On the night of the 12th to the 13th, Paris 
was in an uproar. Royalist writers tell us that 
gunshops were plundered by the mob, re- 
publican writers that the owners of guns vol- 
untarily distributed them. Besenval, lacking 
instructions from Broglie, and hesitating at 
what faced him, had done little or nothing; 
but Paris intended to be ready for him if he 
should act on the following day. 

On the 13th, the disorder and excitement 
continued. The committee at the Hotel de 
Ville took in hand the formation of battalions 
for each section of the city; while Besenval 
still remained almost inactive at the gates. On 
the 14th the insurrection culminated, and won 
what proved to be a decisive victory. 

At the east end of Paris stood the Bastille. 
It was a mediaeval dungeon of formidable as- 
pect, armed with many cannon and dominating 
the outlet from the populous faubourg St. An- 
toine to the country beyond — one of the mouths 
of famishing Paris. It contained a great store 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 67 

of gunpowder and a garrison of about 100 
Swiss and veterans. The fortress had an evil 
reputation as a state prison. Although in July, 
1789 its cells were nearly all unoccupied, popu- 
lar legend would have it that numerous victims 
of royal despotism, arbitrarily imprisoned, lay 
within its walls. So it was a symbol of the 
royal authority within Paris, a threat, or reck- 
oned so, to the faubourg St. Antoine and the 
free movement of food supplies from the east 
side of the city, a store of guns and ammunition. 
For all these reasons the mob, undisturbed by 
Besenval, turned to attack it. 

The first effort was in vain. Although the 
garrison of the Bastille, except its commander, 
the Marquis de Launay, was disinclined to fire 
on the mob, and was so short of provisions 
that resistance was useless, the attackers suc- 
ceeded in little more than getting possession 
of some of the outbuildings of the fortress. 
The musketry which the Governor directed 
from the keep proved more than the mob cared 
to face. But the first wave of attack was soon 
reinforced by another. From the French reg- 
iments of Besenval's army a steady stream of 
deserters was now setting into Paris through 
every gate. A number of these soldiers and of 
the men of the regiment of the French guards 



68 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

were drawn to the Bastille by the sound of the 
firing and now took up the attack with system 
and vigour. Elie, a non-commissioned officer 
of the Queen's regiment, gave orders, supported 
by Hullin, Marceau, and others; two small 
pieces of cannon were brought up, the soldiers 
and some few citizens formed elbow to el- 
bow, the guns were wheeled opposite the great 
drawbridge in the face of the musketry, and at 
that the Bastille gave up. De Launay made an 
attempt to explode his magazine, but was 
stopped by his men. The white flag was dis- 
played, the drawbridge was let down, and the 
besiegers poured in. 

Great disorder followed. De Launay and 
one of his officers were massacred despite the 
efforts of Elie and the soldiers. The uproar 
of Paris was intensified by the victory. At 
the opposite side of the city there had been 
another success; the Invalides had been taken 
and with it 30,000 muskets. With these the 
civic guard was rapidly being armed, under 
the direction of the committee of the sections. 
The Hotel de Ville was the centre of excite- 
ment, and the provost of the merchants, having 
lost all authority, was anxious to surrender his 
power to the new insurrectional government. 
Late in the evening he too was sacrificed to 



FRANCE AT VERSAILLES 69 

the violence of the mob, and, drawn from the 
Hotel de Ville, was quickly massacred by the 
worst and most excitable elements of the popu- 
lace. 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 

THE effect of the insurrection of Paris 
was immediate. Besenval, lacking 
instructions and intimidated by the 
violence of the rising, held his troops back; 
while Louis, shrinking from violence as he al- 
ways did, and alarmed at the desertion in the 
army, decided to bow before the storm. He 
had nerved himself to a definite and resolute 
policy, but the instant that policy had come 
to the logical proof of blood-letting, he had 
fallen away; his kindliness, his incapacity for 
action, had asserted themselves strongly. 

Necker was once more recalled, and once 
more weakly lent himself to what was rapidly 
becoming a farcical procedure. The King, 
without ceremony, presented himself to the 
National Assembly and announced that in view 
of the events of the day before he had recalled 
his minister, and ordered Besenval's troops to 
be withdrawn. The assembly manifested its 
satisfaction, and sent a deputation headed by 

70 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 71 

Bailly to communicate this good news to Paris. 
And on the same day began the first movement 
of emigration of the defeated courtier caste, 
headed by the Comte d' Artois and de Breteuil. 

The deputation from the assembly presently 
reached Paris, and was received by the com- 
mittee of the sections at the Hotel de Ville. 
There followed congratulation, speech-making, 
disorder, and excitement; and out of it the in- 
surrection evolved a political head and a mil- 
itary leader, Bailly and La Fayette. 

Bailly was proposed and acclaimed as Mayor 
of Paris. This office was new, and therefore 
revolutionary, but as the provost of the mer- 
chants had clearly gone for all time, it was nec- 
essary to find something to replace him, and 
what could be better than this? The new 
mayor had as qualifications for his office two 
facts only : he was the senior deputy of the city 
to the National Assembly ; he possessed an un- 
quenchable supply of civic and complimentary 
eloquence. Behind this figurehead the sec- 
tions soon built up a new municipality or town 
council made up of delegates from the sections, 
and that varied in numbers at different times. 

Paris also required a military leader, and 
for that post the name of the Marquis de La 
Fayette was acclaimed. La Fayette is a per- 



72 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

sonage easy to praise or to blame, but not to 
estimate justly. At this moment he enjoyed 
all the prestige of his brilliant connection with 
the cause of American independence ten years 
before, and of his constancy to the idea of 
liberty. His enemies, and they were many in 
Court circles, could detect easily enough the 
vanity that entered into his composition, but 
neither they nor his friends could recognise 
or appreciate in him that truest liberalism of 
all which is toleration. La Fayette had al- 
ready learned the lesson it took France a cen- 
tury to learn, that liberty implies freedom of 
opinion for others, and that reasonable compro- 
mise is the true basis of constructive politics. 
When later he appeared to swerve, or to contra- 
dict himself, it was often enough merely because 
he felt the scruples of a true devotee of liberty, 
against imposing a policy. For the moment 
he had become a popular idol, the generous, 
brave, high-minded young knight, champion 
of the popular cause. He was to command 
the civic guards of the city of Paris, 40,000 
armed citizens, the national guards as they be- 
came owing to the rest of France following 
the example of Paris. His first act was to 
give them a cockade, by adding the King's 
white to the city's red and blue, thus forming 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 73 

the same tricolour that he had already fought 
under in another struggle for liberty ten years 
before. 

The King's withdrawal of the troops implied 
a policy of conciliation, and he was therefore 
unable to resist the demand that he should 
demonstrate his acceptance of the events of 
Paris by a formal visit to the city. Reluctant, 
and half expecting violence, he made his entry 
on the 17th between lines of armed citizens 
representing every class of his Parisian sub- 
jects, and proceeded to the Hotel de Ville. It 
was an occasion on which a little kingly grace 
or a little kingly boldness, which so many of his 
ancestors commanded, might have fired the 
flame of pent-up popular emotion. But there 
was nothing of this sort to be found in the 
apathetic Louis. Bailly's stores of oratory had 
to be drawn on freely for what the King found 
himself unable to supply, and the honours of the 
day, which he might so easily have had, were 
heaped instead on the dashing La Fayette. As 
it was, Louis returned safely to Versailles, hav- 
ing met with a not unfriendly reception, but 
having failed to adjust himself to the new sit- 
uation, which was what he was bound to at- 
tempt, having once, abandoned the policy of re- 
pression by force. 



74 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The uproar of the 14th of July could not be 
suddenly changed to a calm, whatever Louis 
XVI, La Fayette and Bailly might do. Grave 
disorders broke out in many parts of France, 
and scenes of violence continued in Paris. On 
the 20th^ Count Lally moved a resolution for 
the repression of the excesses that were being 
committed, but the assembly, with no sense of 
responsibility for the conduct of affairs, — di- 
rectly interested, on the contrary, in weaken- 
ing the executive, — defeated it. In Paris, 
these scenes culminated on the 23rd, when Fou- 
lon, who had been Controleur des Finances, was 
brought in to the city from his country estate, 
where he had been seized. Foulon represented 
all that was worst in the old regime. As com- 
missary with the French armies and later in 
the internal administration of the country, he 
had displayed the most heartless rapacity. His 
attitude towards the lower classes was echoed 
in utterances that were popularly quoted. The 
people, he declared, might feed on hay while 
he was minister ; — the people had now got him 
in their clutches. In vain Bailly and Lafayette, 
during a long agony at the Hotel de Ville, at- 
tempted to save him; the mob would not be 
denied. Finally Foulon was seized; he was 
strung up to a street lantern, and later his 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 75 

head, the mouth stuffed full of hay and nettles, 
was paraded in triumph through the streets. 

While such scenes were being enacted in 
Paris, and while all through France the large 
class of poor and criminals created by Bour- 
bonism was committing even worse excesses, 
the assembly was addressing itself to the task 
of regenerating France by endowing her with 
a constitution. This task appeared compara- 
tively simple and was taken up with a light 
heart ; it was only by degrees that the assembly 
discovered the difficulties in the way, and it 
proved to be only after two years of hard 
labour that it could get its constitution ac- 
complished. And even then it proved almost 
useless. 

The Constitution may be left for the present, 
to be considered when, in 1791, it became 
operative. The general trend of the assem- 
bly, however, was to dissociate itself from 
practical concerns of government, to interest 
itself in the theories of politics, and both in its 
attitude toward the events of the day, and in 
its constitutional policy, to weaken the execu- 
tive. The executive and the Bourbon re- 
gime were synonymous, and so the men of the 
National Assembly, with no responsibility as 
it seemed for the good government of France, 



76 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

tried hard, at the moment when a vigorous 
and able executive was more than necessary, 
to pull down the feeble one that existed. It 
was the Nemesis that Bourbonism had brought 
on itself. 

In the midst of these debates the practical 
question of disorder thrust itself forward once 
more in very insistent form, and with very re- 
markable results, on the night of the 4th of 
August. In parts of France the excitement 
had taken the form of a regular Jacquerie in 
which the isolated country houses and families 
of the aristocracy had suffered most. Details 
were accumulating and a terrible picture was 
unfolded before the assembly that night. How 
was the evil to be dealt with ? 

It was the injured themselves who indicated 
the remedy, at their own personal sacrifice. 
The nobles of the assembly, led by Noailles, 
d' Aiguillon, Beauharnais, Lameth, La Roche- 
foucauld, declared that if the people had at- 
tacked the property of the nobles, it was be- 
cause that property represented the iniquities 
of feudalism, that the fault lay there, and that 
the remedy was not to repress the people but 
to suppress the institution. They therefore 
proposed to the Assembly that instead of issu- 
ing proclamations calling on the people to re- 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 77 

store order, it should vote decrees for the 
aboHtion of feudahsm. 

And so feudahsm, or what passed by the 
name, went by the board amid scenes of wild 
enthusiasm. All the seigneurial rights ac- 
cumulated during a thousand years by the 
dominant military caste, the right of justice, 
the privilege of commanding armies, the 
hunting privileges, the warren, the dovecot, 
serfage, were sacrificed on the altar of pa- 
triotic regeneration. The burden of the cen- 
turies was suddenly lifted from the shoulders of 
Jacques Bonhonime. 

The men who proposed this surrender of 
their rights, who had already, by joining the 
Tiers, done so much to accomplish the great 
social revolution, deserve greater consideration 
as a class than history has, as a rule, meted 
out to them. The French nobility at the close 
of the 1 8th century counted in its ranks a 
great number of admirable men, admirable for 
loyalty, for intellectuality, for generosity. It is 
true that the most conspicuous, those who made 
up the Court, or who secured the lucrative ap- 
pointments, had caught the plague of Ver- 
sailles, and that even in the provincial nobility 
there was much copying of the fashion of the 
courtiers. But there were other representa- 



78 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

lives of the 9rder. Most conspicuous was that 
large class of liberal nobles who played so great 
a part in the early days of the Revolution. 
The ten deputies elected by the nobility of Paris 
to the States-General all belonged to ,that cate- 
gory : grave, educated men, writers and think- 
ers, versed in questions of politics, economics, 
religion and education, experienced in many 
details of practical government, soldiers and 
local administrators, penetrated with the 
thought of a protesting and humanitarian age. 
Some, like La Fayette, had played conspicuous 
roles, and proved revolution in the making; 
others, like La Rochefoucauld, had mastered 
every intricacy of political and philanthropic 
thought ; and some, like Condorcet, had proved 
themselves among the masters of science of 
their time. Counts, marquises, dukes, they 
were prepared to lay all aside in the over- 
whelming demand which suffering humanity 
made for release from all its troubles. And 
alongside of these, more loyal to their King if 
less loyal to humanity, no less admirable if 
lagging a little in knowledge and development, 
were those hundreds of country gentlemen, 
many of them poor, who, when the day of ad- 
versity came, rallied to their sovereigns, faced 
the guillotine for them, or laid down their lives 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 79 

following the fearless standard of Henri de La 
Rochejacquelein. The position of the French 
nobility, and the part it played, has been too 
much forgotten. Its most intelligent section 
nearly led the Revolution, which later fell into 
the hands of lawyers and theorists, then of 
demagogues, and lastly of soldiers. 

What has just been said does not imply that 
the action of the National Assembly on the 
night of the 4th of August was altogether 
admirable. The example of the nobles was 
infectious. A consuming fervour of self-sac- 
rifice seized every member of the house. 
Archbishops, bishops and abbots rushed to the 
tribune and offered all they could. Tithes, 
pluralities, and every sort of ecclesiastical priv- 
ilege were sacrificed. The unprivileged class 
attempted desperately, but in vain, to hold its 
own in the contest, and could find nothing more 
to surrender than some of the special privileges 
and franchises attached to certain provinces 
and cities of the kingdom. 

Now all this was generous and admirable, — 
it forms one of the most generous and admi- 
rable pages in history. It was even more. It 
was the emphatic and right declaration that 
privilege and class distinction was the root of 
all the evils of the old system and had been con- 



8o FRENCH REVOLUTION 

demned by the French nation. But it had 
none of the quahties of practical statesman- 
ship. It did not tend to decrease disorder but 
the contrary ; and for the moment, with reform 
advancing so prosperously, order was the first 
consideration. The effects of the decrees were 
disastrous and intensified the bad conditions of 
the country. The woodlands were immediate- 
ly invaded by armies of timber and fuel cutters. 
Game was killed off. The poor country priest 
found his salary gone. The gahelle itself was 
disregarded. Local justice came to an end. 
And so the Government, with all its extra load, 
found the already failing revenue almost en- 
tirely cut off. The peasants and people of 
France interpreted the decrees after their fash- 
ion, refused to pay taxes and abused the sur- 
rendered privileges. 

Through August and September the assem- 
bly continued its constitutional debates, one of 
the three actors in this great political tragedy; 
the other two, Paris and King Louis, watched 
its proceedings with growing impatience. Un- 
easy at the increasing unrest of the capital, at 
the now popular cry that the King ought to re- 
side in Paris, and at the constitutional demands 
which the assembly was gradually formula- 
ting and accumulating, Louis decided to bring 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 8i 

some troops into Versailles for his protection, 
this duty being assigned to the regiment of 
Flanders. This was a small enough matter when 
compared with the formidable preparations 
of de Broglie and Besenval three months be- 
fore, yet it served the purpose of immediately 
crystallizing two opposite currents of opinion. 

In Paris suffering was intense. There had 
been a good harvest, and in many respects the 
economic situation was better. But there was 
a drought, and the millers, depending on water 
to drive their mills, could not produce flour. 
There had been a sudden curtailment of Court 
and aristocratic expenditure, so that the Pari- 
sian wage earner was unemployed. The em- 
igration had thrown many retainers out of 
their places. Paris was starving even before 
the summer months were over, and the ag- 
itators and political leaders were not slow to 
point to Versailles as the cause. That city, 
owing to the King's presence, was always com- 
paratively well supplied with provisions; if 
only Louis could be brought to the capital, Ver- 
sailles might starve and Paris would fatten. 
And winter was fast coming on. 

At the palace of Versailles offended pride 
and rebounding hope were going out to the 
regiment of Flanders. On the ist of October 



82 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the crisis was reached. On that day the 
assembly sent to the King a declaration of 
rights to which his assent was demanded. In 
the evening a banquet was given in the pal- 
ace to bring together the officers of the King's 
bodyguard, of the regiment of Flanders and 
of the national guards of Versailles; and 
it resulted in a demonstration. The King 
and Queen visited the assembled officers and 
were received with great enthusiasm. O 
Richard, o mon Roi, the air that Blondel 
sings to Richard, the imprisoned king of Eng- 
land, in the then popular opera by Gretry, 
was sung, and officers of the national guard 
were moved to change their tricolour cockade 
for the white one of the King. All this, if not 
very dangerous, was exciting; it was im- 
mensely magnified by rumour. In Paris the 
popular orators soon conjured up visions of a 
great royalist plot, and the renewal of military 
operations against the city. 

On the Sth of October, the King, struggling 
against the pressure of the assembly, sent in 
a conditional acceptance of the proposals of 
the 1st, making some reservations as to the 
declaration of rights. He did not know that 
at the very moment Paris had risen once more, 
and was already marching out to Versailles to 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 83 

carry him off and bring him back to the capital. 

The insurrection of the Sth of October had 
rather obscure origins. Some of its leading 
factors, however, stand out clearly enough. 
First there was the slowly rising tide of the 
popular impatience, the feeling that after all 
the efforts and success of the spring and sum- 
mer the situation of affairs was still no better, 
and that to improve it the King must come to 
Paris; all this increasing vastly in force since 
the 1st of October. Then there was the fact 
that Paris knew on the evening of the 4th, 
that Louis would refuse, or in part refuse, the 
demands of the assembly, and it was neces- 
sary, therefore, to find a reply to the King's 
move. Last of all was hunger. And it was 
the part of the Parisian people most nearly 
touched by hunger that actually raised the 
standard of revolt. 

The women felt the pinch of famine more 
bitterly than the men, and the women played 
a noteworthy part in the formation of those 
deep strata of popular opinion, or instinct, on 
which in turn each of the revolutionary parties 
had to build their power. The women were 
the first to turn the cannon against the King, 
and they were the last to raise the horrible 
howl of the guillotine at the prisoners as they 



84 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

passed the prison gates to go to the scaffold. 
And the reason is not far to seek. It was they 
who had to look after the household, to tend 
the sick, to feed the children, and it was they 
who day after day, year after year, formed in 
the long procession waiting to reach the baker's 
or the butcher's stall. Often enough they 
stood and struggled for hours, sometimes 
through the whole night, their hearts aching 
for the loved ones at home, — at the end of all to 
find nothing left, to return empty-handed. So 
late as the year 1795 there was a period of sev- 
eral months during which the individual ration, 
for those who could pay and for those who were 
lucky, was but 2 oz. of black bread a day ; while 
butcher's meat failed completely on many occa- 
sions and was always a costly luxury. The 
details of the famine are scattered broadly 
through the pages of the contemporaries, and at 
every point the woman appears, wretched, la- 
menting, furious, ravenous for food, fighting 
for it and plundering, her heart dulled with bit- 
terness, and her mouth distorted with curses for 
those pointed out to her as the cause of all her 
sufferings. Louis, Marie Antoinette, Brissot, 
Vergniaud, Hebert, she cared little what the 
name was, but was equally ready to rend them 
when told that they stood for the starvation of 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS a5 

her children, her sick, or her husband. And 
she was easily enough persuaded that some one 
person was responsible. In the morning hours 
of the 6th of October she was convinced that 
Louis was that person. 

In the early hours of that day a knot of 
women, one of them beating a drum, others 
lugubriously chanting dit> pain, du pain, bread, 
bread, appeared in the streets of Paris. 
Growing in numbers as they advanced, an in- 
choate mob of women, men and boys, they 
proceeded to the Hotel de Ville; there perhaps 
they would find relief? But there was no re- 
lief, only tumult, until Maillard, a patriot ag- 
itator, conspicuous as one of the captors of 
the Bastille and since, harangued them. 
Maillard, who was in touch with the leading 
spirits among the politicians of the sections, 
told the women that there was nothing to do 
at the Hotel de Ville, but that he would lead 
them to Versailles, where they could see the 
King and persuade him to give them bread and 
to come back with them to Paris. 

A motley procession poured out from Paris, 
following Maillard into the country roads 
and villages on the way to Versailles. Armed 
men had joined the women, and a few cannon 
had been found and were dragged by hand. 



86 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Meanwhile La Fayette, always sent for in 
emergencies, had arrived at the Hotel de Ville ; 
while alarming reports began to reach Ver- 
sailles of the approach of the women of Paris. 
La Fayette was quickly joined by a large force 
of national guards, and while he awaited in- 
structions and pacified them with occasional 
harangues, Bailly and his councillors debated 
as to what course to take. Finally about five 
in the afternoon it was decided that La Fayette 
and his men should proceed to Versailles to 
preserve order and act according to circum- 
stances. 

Long before the Parisian troops could ar- 
rive, Versailles had been taken by storm by the 
women. They tramped in under a beating 
rain, many having lagged or fallen exhausted 
by the way, and at once sent deputations to the 
assembly and the King. They wanted food, 
and they wanted decrees that would put an 
end to starvation. To the men of the regiment 
of Flanders, drawn up to protect the palace, 
they announced the same thing, and their ap- 
peals were so irresistible that after some hours 
the colonel of the regiment, on declaring that he 
could not answer for his men any longer, got 
permission to return to barracks. 



FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS 87 

But by this time La Fayette had reached the 
scene, and had stationed his battahons so as to 
protect the palace. An anxious night was 
passed. In the mob were very dangerous 
elements. The grilles and walls, the courts, 
the grounds and the buildings of the palace, 
covered a wide area. The organization for 
defence was defective ; the gardes du corps were 
trustworthy but not numerous ; the King gave 
few orders, and those benevolent or timid; the 
unrest and pressure of the mob was irresistible. 
In the early hours of the morning a deter- 
mined group of men got into the palace, and 
immediately began to force their way towards 
the Queen's apartment. 

As the 6th of October opened, a scene of 
great excitement took place within the palace. 
Gardes du corps were cut down while protect- 
ing the Queen's flight to the King's apartments. 
La Fayette was sent for in haste, and some sort 
of order was restored. But meanwhile the 
mob had invaded the main courtyard, and it 
required all La Fayette's great popularity and 
tact to avert a fatal outbreak. As it was, he 
persuaded Louis that the only course was to ac- 
cept the popular demand for his removal to 
Paris; he harangued the mob; he induced the 



88 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

King and Queen to show themselves at a win- 
dow; he gracefully kissed the Queen's hand; 
and he eventually prevailed. 

At noon Paris began to flow back from Ver- 
sailles to the capital once more, but now Louis 
and his family were in the midst of the throng. 
In a great lumbering coach, surrounded by the 
populace, Louis and his wife and children were 
proceeding from the palace of Versailles to that 
of the Tuileries; an epoch of French history 
was coming to a close. The Austrian princess, 
looking out and seeing a man of the people 
riding on the step of her coach, declared con- 
temptuously that this was the first occasion on 
which an individual not wearing knee 
breeches, an individual sans culotte, had oc- 
cupied so honourable a position. The cry of 
sans culotte was taken up, and approved on 
the spot as the symbol of worthy citizenship. 
But the cant phrase that belongs most closely 
to the event of the 6th of October, was that 
whereby the Parisians declared triumphantly 
that they had now brought into their midst le 
boulanger, la boulangere, et le petit mitron, — 
the baker, the baker's wife and the little cook 
boy. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ASSEMBLY DEMOLISHES PRIVILEGE 

IN the preceding chapter, stress has been 
laid on the economic causes that had led 
to the rooting up of the Bourbons from 
Versailles; in this one the political significance 
of the event must be accentuated. In the 
history of the Revolution it is always so; the 
political and the economic factors are con- 
stantly fusing the one in the other. 

In a sense, what had happened was that the 
poor people, the democracy, let us say, of Paris, 
had now got the King in the city and under 
their influence ; not only the King, but also the 
assembly, — for it had followed Louis and was 
installed in a building adjacent to the Tuile- 
ries. And the assembly became quickly con- 
scious of the fact that Paris was now unduly 
weighing on the representation of France, and 
under the lead of Mirabeau attempted to as- 
sert itself. This was the first feeble step 
towards the assumption of power that culmi- 
nated three years later in the appointment of 

89 



90 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the Committee of Public Safety. The assem- 
bly assumed a middle position between the 
King on the one hand and the mob on the other. 
It voted the change of Louis' title from King 
of France, by the grace of God, to King of the 
French, by virtue of the Constitution; it re- 
pressed disorder by proclaiming martial law; 
but in the continuation of its constitutional de- 
bates it asserted unequivocally its middle-class 
composition. A handful of democrats, Robes- 
pierre, Gregoire, and less than a dozen others, 
pleaded the rights of the many, but the assem- 
bly declined to listen to them and confirmed, 
by a nearly unanimous vote, the recommenda- 
tions of its committees for drawing up the 
declaration of rights and constitution. The 
greater part of French citizens were thereby 
declared to have only passive, not active 
rights, and were excluded from the franchise^ 
The qualification for voting was placed at the 
paying of taxes equal to 3 days' labour, and for 
being a deputy paying in taxes one marc of 
silver, about 54 francs. 

The outcry against this legislation was so 
loud, and so widespread, as to show what gen- 
uine political aspirations were to be found in 
the mass of the Parisian population. The 
greater part of that population was excluded 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 91 

from voting. For to say nothing of the fact 
that about 120,000 inhabitants were classed as 
paupers, it so happened that the capitation tax 
had been remitted for a term of years, leaving 
only the well-to-do shopkeeper, some part of 
the professional, and the capitalist class on the 
voters' list. Workmen of the faubourg St. 
Antoine signed a petition to be allowed to pay 
taxes so as to obtain a vote. Robespierre, a 
narrow, prudish, jealous, puritanical but able 
lawyer from Arras, with journalists like Des- 
moulins and Loustallot, inveighed against 
what they described as iniquitous class legisla- 
tion that would have excluded from the coun- 
cils of the French nation Jean Jacques Rous- 
seau and even that pauvre sans culotte Jesus 
Christ. But the assembly was obdurate, and, 
in fact, remained middle class in its point 
of view all through the Revolution except 
when irresistible pressure was brought to bear 
against it. 

The journalists, however, tended far more 
rapidly towards democracy than the deputies. 
Journalism had sprung from the events of 
July. The pamphlets of Camille Desmoulins 
had, by a natural metamorphosis, become 
journals after that date. Their popularity did 
not, however, attain that of Loustallot's Revo- 



92 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

lutions de Paris, of which one number is said 
to have reached a circulation of 200,000. 
Marat's Ami du peuple, first pubHshed in 
September, soon became the most formidable 
organ of opinion, and remained so until the 
rise of Hebert and his atrocious Pere 
Duchesne, at a later period. These papers 
and their editors played a great part, and will 
often be noticed, but for the present all that 
need be said is that their rise at this period is 
one of the symptoms of the tremendous change 
that had come over the city of Paris. 

Paris before 1789 was, in a sense, mediaeval, 
provincial. Although the largest city of 
France, its capital, the centre of thought and 
art, the resort of many French and foreign 
visitors, the city was still in a way a local 
centre, and isolated, unrelated with the rest of 
France. The Court did not reside there, the 
administration, especially of justice, was in 
large measure decentralized, and Paris was 
the abode of the Parisian almost in the same 
narrow sense that the province was the abode 
of the provincial. But now all this was rapidly 
changing. The arrival of the Court and of 
the National Assembly suddenly made of 
Paris the heart of France. The fever of rev- 
olution made that heart beat faster, and a rapid 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 93 

current of the best life blood of the nation be- 
gan circulating from the provinces to Paris 
and from Paris back again to the provinces, 
bringing energy and a broadening of sympathy 
with it. And if a glance is taken at Europe 
during the same period, during the twenty-five 
years that follow the outbreak of the French 
Revolution, the same process may be seen at 
work, but on a larger scale. The old stag- 
nation, the feudal congestion of Germany and 
Italy, the immobility of the population, is 
broken through, the old barriers are shaken 
down ; great centralized states send official, eco- 
nomic, and national action sweeping back and 
forth; great armies tramp through the whole 
breadth of Europe ; roads are built in all direc- 
tions to facilitate their movements, people be- 
gin to know one another, to mix, to form larger 
conceptions of humanity. 

The most potent of the agencies that effected 
this change in Paris was the direct work of the 
deputies themselves. The move to the capital 
had been attended by the formation of several 
well-marked currents of opinion among the dep- 
uties. One of these had been a movement of 
protest, — of protest and in part of timidity. 
The violence and compulsion applied to the 
King, and all that the removal to Paris implied 



94 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

under such circumstances, had led to the 
withdrawal of about 200 members of the 
assembly. Of these Mounier was the chief; 
he returned to his province of Dauphine and 
attempted to provoke constitutional action to 
free the King from the domination of Paris. 
His efforts were unsuccessful and he event- 
ually had to leave the country. This group, 
however, of which Mounier was the boldest 
member, represented merely a negative force, 
dispersion; another, equally large, stood for 
something more concrete. 

The Club Breton began to develop very 
rapidly after the removal to Paris. Its mem- 
bers, styling themselves Amis de la Constitu- 
tion, eventually settled themselves in quarters 
conveniently near the palace at the Jacobin 
monastery. Here the club quickly became a 
debating association, and the headquarters of 
a party. Early in 1790 it began to develop a 
system of affiliating clubs all through France, 
and by August of that year had planted 150 
Jacobin colonies in direct correspondence with 
the mother society. By 1794 this number had 
grown to a thousand, and Jacobinism had be- 
come a creed. But in 1789 and 1790 the 
Jacobins were as yet moderate in their views; 
they were the men who wanted to create a con- 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 95 

stitution under the monarchy; they were pre- 
sided during that period by such men as the 
Due de Noailles, the Due d' Aiguillon and 
Mirabeau. 

Mirabeau stood out in the assembly as the 
one constructive statesman, the one man who 
might bridge the gulf that still separated the 
deputies from the responsibility of power and 
the practice of government. If a constitutional 
or parliamentary ministry were possible, if both 
King and assembly would recognise in that the 
practical step towards re-establishing order and 
making reform effective, Mirabeau was the 
necessary leader of such a ministry. In the 
period that followed the arrival of the King in 
Paris he amply demonstrated both his 
qualifications and his defects for such a posi- 
tion. Urgent questions pressed the assembly 
from all sides, and in debating them Mirabeau 
took a lion's share. 

Finance was most urgent of all. Necker 
could do no more. A fundamental remedy for 
the needs of the exchequer must be found. 
On the 7th of October the assembly had voted 
that the Crown lands should become the prop- 
erty of the nation, in return for which a civil 
list would be assigned to the King. Three 
days later Talleyrand-Perigord, the sceptical 



96 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

but able Bishop of Autun, proposed that the 
property of the Church should be similarly 
dealt with. This was, in one sense, as the 
previous step had been, the assertion of the 
national interest over the special privilege; in 
another sense it was merely one step more in 
those numerous secularizations of Church 
property which the utilitarian and unreligious 
1 8th century had carried out. It was pro- 
posed to take over for the use of the State all 
the property of the Church and in return to 
pay salaries to its priests. This represented 
the acquisition of real property valued at the 
capital sum of 2,100,000,000 of francs ; but as it 
only brought in capital value, not cash in hand, 
it did not afford any immediate relief for the 
needs of the Government. Then another ex- 
pedient was tried, the appeal for patriotic gifts, 
and that, though it resulted in a good deal of 
patriotic emotionalism, did little to fill the 
yawning gulf of bankruptcy. Finally in 
December, drastic measures were taken. 
Some of the State's payments were provi- 
sionally suspended; the sale of Church and 
other lands to the value of 400 millions was 
ordered; a loan of 80 millions was sanctioned; 
and 400 millions of assignats were issued. 
The assignat in this first form was an in- 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 97 

choate mortgage bond. It bore interest; it 
was guaranteed by the State; it purported to 
be secured in a general way on the national 
property ; and it was to circulate as money and 
to be accepted in payment for the national 
lands. If it had been strictly secured, on a 
close valuation, and by a registered claim 
against specified property, it would doubtless 
have given a permanent support to the finances 
of the Government. As it was it proved, at 
first, a successful step, and it was only by 
gradual stages and from unwise measures that 
it eventually failed. In April 1790, assignats 
were made legal tender; a few months later 
they ceased to bear interest, — in other words, 
though still bonds on their face they really be- 
came paper money. In September 1790, 
another 800 millions were issued, and in June 
another 600, and in small denominations, and 
from that moment they began to sink in value 
rapidly. Until the month of January 1791 
they stood at over 90; in July 1791 they were 
at 87; during 1792-93, years of the greatest 
crisis, they fell fast; in 1795 they had almost 
lost value and during the Directoire period the 
assignat becomes almost worthless, one re- 
corded transaction giving 3,080 francs in paper 
for 20 in gold. 



98 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Behind the financial policy of the assembly 
was Mirabeau. He had long been connected 
with the bankers and promoters of Paris, had 
produced pamphlets to serve their financial 
projects. The bond issues of the assembly, 
and the probable sales of large blocks of real 
property, were of great interest to these groups, 
and Mirabeau was their natural connecting 
link with the assembly. He was the strongest 
advocate of the assignat measures, and what- 
ever interest his friends took in them, it need 
not be doubted that he believed them salutary 
and wise. 

The Court in its new perplexity, helplessly 
entangled in Paris, having learnt just a little 
from experience, now turned to Mirabeau for 
assistance. He secretly advised that the King 
should take the initiative, and should put for- 
ward the policy of a moderate constitution on 
the English model with a responsible ministry. 
If this brought on a conflict, or if his situation 
otherwise made it advisable to leave Paris, he 
should seek refuge in the well-disposed prov- 
ince of Normandy, and not with the army on 
the German frontier. The advice of Mira- 
beau was not unsound, and it implied as a step 
the formation of a Mirabeau, Necker, La Fay- 
ette ministry. 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 99 

But Mirabeau was too much handicapped by 
his past. The Assembly viewed him with 
rooted suspicion and disHke, and for this rea- 
son the Court could not have chosen a worse 
agent. At the end of November the assembly 
voted decrees excluding its members from the 
King's ministry, thus barring Mirabeau's path, 
and thus accentuating once more its own de- 
structive attitude towards the Government. 
If it would not participate, even indirectly, in 
the executive, it was partly because it was at 
heart anxious to pull that executive down to 
earth. 

Notwithstanding this check, Mirabeau con- 
tinued to impose on the assembly by his tre- 
mendous personality and by his statesmanship. 
He struggled hard in the early part of 1790 to 
bring the deputies into line on a question of 
foreign affairs that then arose, — the Nootka 
Sound question. This involved all the tradi- 
tions of France's foreign policy and her system 
of alliances, the pacte de famille; but the 
assembly saw in it merely a text on which to 
formulate the limitations it intended to impose 
on the royal power in the matter of foreign re- 
lations. At this moment the Court had 
renewed its clandestine communications with 
Mirabeau, there was even one secret inter- 



loo FRENCH REVOLUTION 

view between him and the Queen, and large 
sums were given him as payment for his 
advice. These sums he squandered profusely, 
thus advertising a fact that was already more 
than suspected by the public, and rapidly de- 
stroying his hold on opinion. 

The winter was a much milder one than the 
preceding, food was less scarce, money more 
plentiful owing to the issue of assignats, 
public confidence greatly increased. But the 
tension between the King and the assembly did 
not relax; there was no serious attempt on 
either side to take advantage of the improved 
situation for effecting a reconciliation. The 
assembly legislated against the members of 
the aristocracy who, following the example of 
the Comte d' Artois, had emigrated. Instead 
of helping the Government to enforce police 
measures that would have made their res- 
idence in France secure, it decreed the confis- 
cation of their rents unless they returned with- 
in three months. This was the first of a long 
series of laws aimed against the emigres. 

Turning from one privileged order to the 
other, the assembly continued the attacks on 
the fabric of the Church which had been begun 
by the churchmen themselves in August and 
October 1789. The surrender of the tithes. 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED loi 

70,000,000 francs annually, had told most 
heavily against the poor country priest and in 
favour of the landowner, who bore the burden 
of his salary. The taking over of the Church 
lands by the State had been most felt by the 
higher ecclesiastics and the monastic orders. 
In February 1790 the latter were suppressed, 
and their members were relieved of their vows 
by the assembly, which had now frankly em- 
barked on an anti-clerical policy. It would 
not recognise of itself that it was less represent- 
ative of France in the matter of religion than 
in any other; for it was the intellectual and 
professional class only, to which nearly all the 
deputies belonged, that was Voltairian or anti- 
Catholic, the mass of the people of France were 
still attached to their ancient faith. During 
the protracted debates that took place on the 
Church question in the spring of 1790, the 
assembly attempted several times to evade 
the question of the Catholic members as to 
whether or not it would recognise the existence 
of the Church. At last, with great reluctance, 
in June, the assembly voted that the Catholic 
religion was that of France ; but it followed this 
up by passing what was known as the Con- 
stitution civile du clerge. This decree pro- 
vided that all priests should receive their sal- 



102 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

aries from the State; that the old dioceses of 
France should be broken up and made to fit 
the new departmental division that had 
supplanted the old provincial one; that the 
bishop should be created by the vote of the 
electors of his department; and that the Pope 
should exercise no authority over bishops or 
priests. 

It needs but little acquaintance with history 
to realize how wilfully subversive this plan 
was. The maintenance of the clergy by the 
tithes, placed it outside the sphere of Govern- 
ment control, and helped to maintain the 
ancient Roman internationalism; whereas the 
breaking off of the Pope's direct connection 
with the bishops was Gallicanism of the most 
pronounced character. Pope Pius VI un- 
equivocally declared that the carrying through 
of any such law in France would amount to a 
schism, and transmitted that opinion to Louis 
XVI. 

The falseness of the King's position was 
made intolerable by the dilemma in which he 
was now placed. There was as yet no formal 
Constitution, only a revolutionary situation in 
which the assembly had usurped a large part 
of the King's prerogative. It was, however, 
virtually accepted by both sides that under the 



PRIVILEGE DEMOLISHED 103 

constitution when passed, the King should 
have the power of veto, and by tacit accord that 
arrangement had been from the first put into 
force. The assembly voted decrees and sent 
them to the King for his signature. But in 
reality the veto, even before its strict constitu- 
tional existence, was little more than a sham. 
The situation was revolutionary. Both par- 
ties were hostile, and almost without excep- 
tion every signature of the King was an act of 
moral compulsion. Hitherto, however, his 
acceptance of the situation had not involved 
more than bowing before a political storm; 
now the matter was graver, the question was of 
schism, and therefore of heresy. 

Louis was a faithful believer in the Roman 
theology, as well as in the divine right of 
kings, and he struggled hard to withhold his 
signature from the civil constitution of the 
clergy. And when, after some weeks, he 
finally gave in, it was under protest. From 
that moment he adopted the attitude of the 
man acting under restraint who ascribes no 
binding force to acts and deeds resulting from 
compulsion. 

The acceptance of the civil constitution of 
the clergy by the King did not conclude the 
matter. Furious protests arose. In the south 



104 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of France, bishops, priests and national guards 
for some weeks threatened an outbreak of 
rehgious war. The assembly met this dis- 
order more firmly than that proceeding from 
economic and political reasons. Towards the 
close of the year it imposed on the clergy an 
oath of adhesion to the civil constitution, 
and this only four bishops were found to 
accept. In January 1791 elections were 
ordered for filling the places of those members 
of the Church who had refused the oath, and 
presently France found herself with two bodies 
of clergy, official and non-official, constitutional 
and anti-constitutional. 

To close a chapter dealing so largely with 
the destructive efiforts of the middle-class 
assembly against the prerogatives of the King 
and of the two privileged orders, it may be 
noted that on the 19th of June, 1790, on the 
proposal of members of the nobility, all titles 
were abolished. Flereafter Mirabeau is 
Honore Riquetti, the ci-devant Comte de 
Mirabeau; and Camille Desmoulins, prompt, 
picturesque and impertinent, logically applies 
the process to the King himself and rechristens 
Louis, Mr, Capet VainL 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 

ON the 14th of July 1790 was held the 
first great festival of the Revolution, 
the federation of the national guards 
at the Champ de Mars in Paris. Federation 
was the name that had been given all through 
France the previous year to district or de- 
partmental gatherings or reviews, at which the 
newly raised national guards had paraded and, 
with great ceremony, sworn patriotic oaths. 
This was now repeated on a grander and more 
centralized scale, to commemorate the fall of 
the Bastille twelve months before. On the 
military exercise ground just outside Paris, 
14,000 national guards assembled. An altar 
was erected, at which Talleyrand, Bishop of 
Autun and deputy, officiated. La Fayette led 
the military procession. Louis was made to 
play an almost subordinate role. The national 
guards took an oath of fidelity to La Fayette, 
the Law, and Louis XVI; the gradation was 
intended and significant. 

105 



io6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The festival was, in a sense, merely an echo 
of the policy which the assembly was pursuing 
in regard to the army. The army was a great 
factor in the situation; sooner or later, as in 
most revolutions, it was likely to prove the 
decisive one. From the first the pressure of 
the armed force on Paris had acted as a power- 
ful irritant; and in reducing the power of 
the King nothing seemed more important than 
to detach the army from its allegiance. The 
mutiny and desertion of July 1789 gave the 
assembly a good starting point; in the spring 
of 1790 the troops were placed under oath to 
obey the law and the King, and not to act 
against the citizens. This, however, was not 
decisive, for on the northeastern frontier, far 
from Paris, among the fortresses of Alsace and 
Lorraine, a considerable part of the army was 
assembled. There French and foreign reg- 
iments were well mixed, esprit de corps was 
maintained, staunch loyalists were in com- 
mand, and it was conceivable that the troops 
would respond to Louis' appeal if the King 
summoned them to his help. 

So thought Marat, and many others. The 
author of the Ami dii peiiple voiced the 
popular fear, that the army on the north- 
eastern frontier would destroy the national 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 107 

cause. Everything in Marat's career tended 
to make him the accredited prophet of the 
reign of suspicion now fast becoming estab- 
lished. He had during many years studied 
science and philosophy, and had acquired the 
knack of writing while unsuccessfully knocking 
at the doors of the academies. The outbreak 
of the Revolution found him soured, and ready 
to turn a venomous pen against all detainers 
of power. A morbid streak fast developed 
into a mania of persecution and suspicion, and 
it was by giving free rein to his imagination 
in that respect that he came into line with the 
frenzy of starving women and declaiming 
demagogues ready to believe every accusation, 
and to rend every accapareur, 

Marat's violence had become so great shortly 
after the taking of the Bastille that he had 
been proceeded against by the new muni- 
cipality of Paris. He then began a life of hid- 
ing, flitting obscurely from point to point, 
dwelling in cellars, even at one time conceal- 
ing himself in a drain. For a few weeks he 
fled to London. But in the spring of 1790 he 
was back in Paris, and at the crisis of the 
midsummer he published a violent pamphlet, 
Cen est fait de nous, "it's all up with us," in 
which he hysterically demanded the massacre 



io8 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of all traitors and conspirators as the only 
means of preserving Paris from the vengeance 
of the King and the operations of his army. 

The assembly denounced the pamphlet, and 
steps were taken for the prosecution of its 
author. Marat had chosen the moment for 
his denunciations badly, for within a few days 
of the publication of his pamphlet the army 
had broken out in open mutiny against its gen- 
erals. Bouille, a staunch royalist and expe- 
rienced soldier, was in command. His men 
were being gradually demoralized by demo- 
cratic propaganda. At last, on the 31st of 
August, several regiments in garrison at 
Nancy broke out in mutiny. 

Bouille displayed great vigour in dealing 
with a difficult and dangerous crisis. He 
forced his way into Nancy after severe fight- 
ing, and dealt summarily with the offenders 
when once he had regained control. One 
French regiment he disbanded. The Swiss 
regiment of Chateauvieux he handed over to 
a court-martial of its officers, who ordered a 
great number of their men to be shot, or to be 
sent to the galleys. ' 

These events caused great excitement. The 
assembly, now alarmed at the result of its own 
work of disintegration, passed a formal vote 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 109 

of thanks to Bouille. The democratic party, 
however, took the opposite side, strongly led 
by the Cordeliers, a popular sectional club. 
Noisy demonstrations followed in favour of 
the defeated soldiers, and license and indis- 
cipline were extolled as the virtues of free men. 
This more than, anything else broke down the 
old royal army, and from this moment the 
cavalry and infantry officers began to throw 
up their commissions and emigrate. And, in- 
cidentally, another fragment of the old regime 
disappeared in the same storm; Necker, still 
a royal minister, unimportant and discredited, 
was mobbed on the 26. of September, and as 
a result resigned and ingloriously left France 
for his native Switzerland. 

Until the winter of 1790 the Revolution had 
not shown signs of becoming anti-monarchical, 
but at the turn of the year republicanism at 
last raised its head. In the attitude of the 
French towards this question one must bear in 
mind the historical precedents before them. 
French opinion was strongly impregnated with 
the apparent lessons of the great revolution 
that had occurred in England a little more 
than one hundred years before. There a re- 
public, founded in revolt from incompetent 



no FRENCH REVOLUTION 

monarchy, had failed, and had made way for 
a mihtary dictatorship, which also had failed, 
to be replaced by the restored monarchy. And, 
last of all, eventual success had come from a 
bargain or compromise between the upper and 
middle class on the one hand and the King 
on the other. This was the historic precedent 
best known and generally uppermost in the 
minds of the men of the national assembly. 

But there was another precedent, that of the 
American revolution, and it tended in the op- 
posite direction. Few, indeed, perceived that 
Washington had succeeded where Cromwell 
had failed; and the event was too near in 
time, too distant in space, too remote in sur- 
roundings, to have as much bearing as it 
should. Yet the impression made was con- 
siderable. Benjamin Franklin's picturesque 
and worthy republicanism was not forgotten: 
his plain clothes and robust sense, his cheer- 
ful refrain of ga ira, — it's all right, — so soon 
to be the song of the French republicans them- 
selves. The men of Rochambeau's army too, 
had caught the infection, had seen republican- 
ism in war, the brave and capable commanding 
whatever their station in life ; and in that army 
were many rankers, held down by the Bourbon 
regime, who were soon to become the victo- 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES iii 

rious generals of the French RepubHc. Again 
the constitutional documents of the Americans 
had been consulted, studied, — declarations of 
right, State constitutions. And all this 
tended towards republicanism. 

Yet even the American example did not 
mean republicanism in the democratic sense. 
And the movement that became so marked 
about December 1790 was distinctly towards 
a democratic republic. Many prominent 
journalists were of that way of thought. Des- 
moulins had been even in 1789. The franchise 
restrictions which the assembly was drafting 
into the Constitution gave the papers a good 
text. It was pointed out that whereas all 
Frenchmen had been admitted to vote for the 
States-General, under the proposed constitu- 
tion there would be but two million voters. 
Why should not the poor man have a vote? 
Why should not even women have a vote? 
Should there not be equality of rights and no 
invidious distinctions ? 

Pamphlets began to appear in favour of a 
republic. Popular societies were formed, and 
became the vogue, with a programme of uni- 
versal suffrage, and fraternization as a social 
characteristic. Women, occasionally children, 
were admitted; the members called one an- 



112 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

other brother and sister, having discarded more 
formal modes of address; popular banquets 
were held. The influence of woman, of which 
something has already been said, was widened 
by the action of these societies; that influence 
a little later tended to give the Revolution the 
hysterical turn which it took. 

The professional politicians showed little 
inclination to follow the lead of the Societes 
populaires. The assembly remained rigidly 
middle class in its attitude. The Jacobin Club 
maintained the same position, though a few of 
its members were now inclining towards de- 
mocracy, and one of them, Robespierre, not 
quite so isolated as a few months earlier, came 
forward as its official mouthpiece. In April 
1 79 1 he issued a speech, printed in pamphlet 
form, in which he ably argued the case for 
democratic suffrage. He was hailed as the 
champion and friend of the poor man, the apos- 
tle of fraternity. 

Since he had been compelled to accept the 
civil constitution of the clergy the King's revolt 
had become more marked. He declared to his 
friends that he would sooner be king of Metz 
than king of France under such terms. The 
rise of the democratic movement in the winter 
had not tended to allay his fears, and by the 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES ii-?. 



>j 



spring of 1791 he was decided, so far as it was 
in his nature ever to be decided, to remove 
from Paris and find some way out of his dif- 
ficulties. His hopes of escape centred on the 
northeastern frontier. There, at Metz, 200 
miles from Paris, were the headquarters of the 
energetic Bouille; and beyond Metz was the 
Rhine, where the Emperor Leopold, his 
brother-in-law, was already assembling troops 
that might prove a further support. 

With such an outlook, it was natural that 
the Court, and in this case the Court meant 
the Queen, should attempt to concert measures 
with Vienna; the phantom of the Austrian al- 
liance, so detested at the time of the Seven 
Years' War, was reappearing. Marie Antoi- 
nette held numerous conferences with the for- 
eign ambassadors on the subject and wrote 
frequent letters to her brother invoking his 
aid ; all of which was more or less suspected or 
known by the public outside the palace walls. 

Paris was, indeed, guarding her king very 
jealously. Marat, constantly preached suspi- 
cion. Zealous sections formed watch commit- 
tees that kept the palace under keen ob- 
servation. If the King attempted to leave 
Paris violence must be used to keep him there. 
Royalists offered their protection to the King; 



114 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and in February a bad brawl took place within 
the palace walls, between the two factions. 

Incidents kept occurring. In March the 
assembly voted that the King was the first 
public functionary, and therefore, like other 
functionaries, responsible for carrying out cer- 
tain duties. One of these was declared to be 
that he must reside within 20 leagues of the 
assembly. This measure was in one sense re- 
strictive ; in another it seemed slightly to loosen 
the King's fetters. To test whether he could 
not take advantage of this decree to enlarge his 
radius of movement, it was decided that Louis 
should attempt an afternoon's excursion as far 
as St. Cloud. 

In all this matter Mirabeau had been con- 
sulted. His advice had been constant and cor- 
rect. If the King would make his departure 
from Paris coincide with taking the lead in 
a real reform he might get most support and 
rouse least opposition by going to Rouen, the 
capital of Normandy, a very accessible point; 
to go to Metz was to touch the self-same chord 
that had whipped Paris into open revolt in 
July 1789. 

But although Mirabeau's advice was asked, 
what he said was only half listened to. No 
one could trust him now, no one could believe 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 115 

him — and besides, he was dying. BattHng in 
the assembly for measures of constructive 
statesmanship, spending his hfe outside with 
profuse extravagance, his vitahty was now 
gone, and a fever carried him off on the 26. of 
April. His death caused a great sensation, 
though few would say a word of praise for the 
great orator. He realized that his death re- 
moved the last possible hope for the monarchy, 
and Louis himself, when Marie Antoinette 
showed her satisfaction at the news, rebuked 
her and declared that he had lost a friend. 

Friendless, what could Louis do now? The 
obscure Robespierre, tortuous, fanatical and 
tenacious, had risen to importance; hitherto 
the giant Mirabeau had held down the smaller 
man and his little group by his breadth, his 
vigour and his crushing apostrophes : — Silence 
aux trente voix! But now that Mirabeau was 
gone, Robespierre suddenly appeared almost 
the first figure of the assembly; and Robes- 
pierre stood for the rising tide of democracy. 
What could Louis do? To escape from Paris 
seemed the only course. 

The King had occasionally been to St. Cloud 
in the year 1790, and the recent edict of the 
assembly formally assured his freedom of 
movement for a much greater distance ; it only 



ii6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

remained to test whether the people of Paris 
would attempt to restrain him from acting in 
a manner that was customary and within his 
constitutional rights. 

The test proved conclusive. A large mob, 
including a number of national guards, as- 
sembled at the palace on Easter Sunday. It 
had been announced that on this day the King 
would visit St. Cloud to hear mass performed 
by priests who had not accepted the civil con- 
stitution. He was not allowed to proceed. 
After sitting in his carriage several hours 
awaiting the moment when the mob would give 
him passage, he returned to his apartments 
defeated. 

Louis was a prisoner. Not only was he a 
prisoner, but he was compelled by the assembly 
to have within the palace only priests whom 
he considered schismatic, and compelled to ap- 
pear in the assembly and there declare solemnly 
that he was a free agent and enjoyed entire 
liberty of action. This drove him to a definite 
purpose, and preparations were now secretly 
begun for the flight to Metz. 

On the 20th of June the attempt was made. 
The King's brother, the Comte de Provence, 
who afterwards became Louis XVIII, man- 
aged his escape well, and was driven over the 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 117 

frontier into the Netherlands, — an experience 
he was to repeat in 181 5. The King's arrange- 
ments had been placed in the hands of a 
Swedish nobleman attached to the Queen, 
Count Fersen. False passports were obtained. 
The royal family was smuggled out of the 
palace in disguise. Several bodyguards 
dressed as couriers acted as escort. A large 
travelling carriage was ready. A start was 
successfully made on the great northeastern 
road. 

All went prosperously until the fugitives 
reached Varennes, a village in the frontier dis- 
trict not more than 15 miles from Verdun, 
where Bouille had a strong garrison. At this 
point the scheme broke down. Bouille should 
have been able to place a large cavalry escort 
about the King's carriage at Varennes, but his 
arrangements were defective and went wrong. 
This was not altogether his fault, for Louis 
had wasted much precious time on the way, 
and had shown no sense of the resolution re- 
quired by the circumstances. And lastly the 
patriots had discovered who the traveller was; 
the postmaster of Ste Menehould had recog- 
nised the King, had ridden on ahead, had 
roused the national guard of Varennes — and 
now the game was up. 



ii8 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

After a slight skirmish between a detach- 
ment of Bouille's cavalry and the national 
guard of Varennes, Louis was started back for 
Paris, surrounded by armed contingents from 
all the near-by villages. The whole course of 
the Revolution had for an instant wavered, 
hesitating whether to turn this way or that. 
Now it had turned in a direction that could not 
be mistaken. Louis himself speaking to one 
of the officials of Varennes said to him: "If 
we return to Paris, we shall die." 

It was early on the morning of the 21st of 
June that Paris learnt that the King had left the 
capital; intense excitement resulted. No doubt 
could be felt as to the significance of the event ; 
the King himself had taken care that there 
should be none by leaving behind a lengthy 
proclamation of which the upshot was that all 
the decrees he had signed were null and void 
because of compulsion. The people answered 
this in the way that might be expected; every 
emblem of royalty was torn down through the 
city. 

The assembly was in a state of the greatest 
uncertainty. It had two dangers to face, one 
from the King, immediate, another from the 
people, less immediate yet calling for much 
prudence. In this moment of crisis and doubt, 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 119 

numerous solutions of the political problem were 
put forward, of which several demand notice. 

Marat, in /' Ami du peuple, declared that a 
military dictator was the only remedy for the 
situation; a curiously logical perception of 
what was to be the outcome of the Revolution. 
This opinion did not obtain any success. 

The due d'Orleans proposed another solu- 
tion. This personage was the head of the 
branch of the French Bourbons that stood next 
to that holding the throne. He had long been 
on bad terms with the Court and had assid- 
uously cultivated popularity among the Pari- 
sians. During the winter of 1788-89 he had 
spent much money and effort in charity and 
the relief of distress, and had his reward on 
the assembly of the States-General at which, 
while the Queen was received in stony silence, 
he had met with an ovation. He did his best 
to create an Orleans party, to push for the 
throne, and devoted to the purpose the large 
sums of money which his great forttme placed 
at his disposal. At every crisis in the 
Revolution small groups, mostly subsidized, 
attempted to provoke demonstrations in his 
favour. And now, on the 21st of June, with 
the throne derelict, he thought his opportunity 
had come, and ostentatiously paraded through 



120 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the central quarters of the city in hopes of a 
popular movement. But the popular move- 
ment would not come. The duke was too well 
understood ; his vices were too well known ; his 
treachery to his cousin aroused no enthusiasm ; 
the people wanted a more complete solution. 

That more complete solution was voiced by 
the Club of the Cordeliers and by its formidable 
spokesman Danton. Like Mirabeau, Danton 
was of large physique and stentorian voice, 
an orator by nature, a man whose unusual if 
far from handsome features fascinated the 
crowd. But, unlike his great predecessor, he 
could hold the affection of the people, indeed, 
he proved one of the few conspicuous leaders 
against whom the people did not turn on the 
day of going to the guillotine. A lawyer, 
and of a lawyer's family, he was in lucrative 
practice when the Revolution broke out, a fine 
advocate, not overscrupulous in method, flex- 
ible, but large in view, generous in heart, 
irresistible in courage, strong in political in- 
stincts, a man of the greatest possibilities. He 
espoused the popular cause, and the popular 
cause in the democratic sense. He stood for 
the sections against the central Commune; 
he defended Marat and the liberty of the press ; 
he opposed the bourgeois regime and La Fay- 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 121 

ette at every step; he led the battaHon of the 
CordeHers section to the Tuileries to pre- 
vent Louis' visit to St. Cloud in April 1791, 
Such was the man who now headed a deputa- 
tion of the Cordeliers Club to the assembly 
and presented a petition demanding the 
deposition of Louis XVI. 

The demand of the Cordeliers for the dep- 
osition of the King was not the thing to please 
the assembly. The situation was doubly diffi- 
cult, for apart from the uncertainty as to the 
whereabouts of the King and the possibility 
of civil war, there was a difficulty in regard 
to the Constitution. For two years past the 
assembly had been labouring hard to complete 
the work it had sworn to accomplish by the 
oath of the Jen de Paume, That work was 
now nearly completed, but was almost as un^ 
popular with the masses as it was hateful to the 
King. It had not even been elaborated in a 
spirit of compromise between the extreme 
claims of autocracy on the one hand and of 
democracy on the other, but was frankly mid- 
dle-class legislation. But the King was an es- 
sential part of the constitutional mechanism 
and his flight had occurred just in time to 
wreck the Constitution as it was coming into 
port — that was the prevailing sentiment of the 



122 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

members of the assembly. When on the 24th 
it was known that Louis had been stopped and 
was returning to Paris, the rehef of the depu- 
ties was great, — their long-laboured Constitu- 
tion was safe after all. 

It was not till the next day that the royal 
family reached the capital ; and before their ar- 
rival more than one exciting scene occurred. 
The due d'Orleans was admitted a member of 
the Jacobin Club. Danton, apparently not un- 
friendly for the moment to d'Orleans, haran- 
gued the Jacobins in favour of the appointment 
of a regency. But the assembly maintained 
a negative attitude. It seized control of the 
administration by ordering the ministers, now 
little more than chief clerks of departments, to 
report to it for orders, and for the rest awaited 
the return of the King. 

On the 25th Louis and his family reached 
Paris. The whole population turned out to 
watch his return, but it gave him no greeting. 
The crowd, obeying a common instinct, re- 
ceived the King in dead silence. Not a voice 
was heard, not a hat was raised, as Louis once 
more passed into his palace of the Tuileries. 



CHAPTER IX 
WAR BREAKS OUT 

FROM the 25th of June to the 17th of July 
the conflict between the middle class 
and the democratic party continued 
with great intensity. Louis was, in reality, 
less the object than the pretext of their quarrel. 
The Cordeliers urged that France, and not the 
assembly, should pronounce the King's fate, 
and to effect that it would be necessary to pro- 
ceed to a referendum, to demand a popular 
vote. But this was precisely what the Consti- 
tution refused to permit, and hence the demand 
was in reality an attack on the Constitution. 
Day after day the agitation grew, changing 
slightly in form. Finally the democrats de- 
cided on a monster petition to be signed at the 
altar of the Champ de Mars on the 17th of July. 
Danton himself stood at one of the corners 
of the platform that day to help on the signing 
of the protest of the Parisian democracy. But 
Bailly, La Fayette, and the mass of the as- 
sembly had decided on a policy of repression. 

123 



124 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The national guards arrived in strong force. 
Confusion followed. Volleys were fired. 
The mob, after losing many dead, fled for 
safety. Danton, escaping, left Paris and pro- 
ceeded to London, where he remained until the 
storm had blown over. By this stroke the as- 
sembly for the moment retained control. But 
the situation was profoundly changed. If 
Danton and the popular insurrectional force 
were for the moment defeated, Robespierre and 
intellectual democracy were making rapid head- 
way; the centre of gravity of revolutionary 
opinion was shifting in his direction. Just be- 
fore the crisis the Jacobins had been invaded 
by a Palais Royal mob who had hooted down 
the constitutionalist speakers, and imposed 
their opinion on the club. This led to disrup- 
tion. The moderate Jacobins left, and, at the 
neighbouring Feuillants, founded a new so- 
ciety that was gradually to become more and 
more retrograde. The few advanced Jacobins 
retained possession of the old club, with its 
great affiliation of country clubs, infused a 
radical element into its membership, and soon, 
making of Robespierre its mouthpiece and its 
prophet, advanced in the direction of imposing 
his doctrine of political salvation on France. 
Meanwhile the assembly, with its constitu- 



WAR BREAKS OUT 125 

tional keystone securely locked up in the 
Tuileries, was hastening to profit by its 
victory. The opportunity for completing the 
Constitution might never recur, and was 
eagerly seized. Louis, a necessary prop to the 
elaborate structure devised by the wisdom of 
the deputies, was deliberately made use of. 
Discredited, a virtual prisoner, finished as a 
monarch, he was converted into a constitu- 
tional fiction, and was compelled by his cir- 
cumstances to resume the farce of kingship, 
and to put his signature to the Constitution 
which, on the 3rd of September, was sent to 
him. 

The Constitution of 1791 was compounded 
partly of political theory, partly of revolution- 
ary effort, of desire to pull down the 
prerogatives of the monarchy in favour of the 
middle class. It was prefaced by a declara- 
tion of the rights of man that stamps the whole 
as a piece of class legislation. By this all 
Frenchmen were guaranteed certain funda- 
mental rights of justice, of opinion, of speech, 
of opportunity, — these were passive rights. 
There were, however, active rights as well; 
and those were reserved for a privileged class.^ 

1 There is no opportunity here for discussing adequately 
the clause in the declaration to the effect that every citizen 



126 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Only those paying taxes equivalent to three 
days' labour had active political rights, that is, 
the right to vote. In primary and secondary 
assemblies they v^ere to elect the 750 deputies 
who were to constitute the sole representative 
chamber. This chamber was to sit for two 
years, the King having no authority to dissolve 
or prorogue it; and it was to possess full leg- 
islative power subject to the King's suspensive 
veto. 

The King was chief executive official, with 
a large power of appointment, and general con- 
trol of matters of foreign policy. He was not 
to choose his ministers from among the 
deputies, and he lost all direct administrative 
control in the local sense. The intendants, and 
the provinces, and the generalites were gone; 
instead of them was a new territorial division 
into departments, in which local elective self- 
government was established. Communes and 
departments were to choose their own govern- 

is entitled to concur in making laws. That clause apparently 
conflicts with what I have said above. My explanation of the 
discrepancy is based on this : that the declaration is a much 
tinkered, composite document, made up over a period of 
many months, and not logical at every point. The clause 
here mentioned I explain as a direct echo of the elections 
to the States-General; it was one of the first drafted; its pre- 
cise significance was soon lost sight of and its inconsistency 
remained unnoticed. 



WAR BREAKS OUT 127 

ing committees, and the old centralized admin- 
istration of the Bourbons had for the moment 
to make way for an opposite conception of gov- 
ernment. 

The signing of the constitution by the King 
brought it into effect, and thereby an election 
became necessary for constituting the new 
representative body, a body that was to be 
known as the Legislative, Before leaving its 
parent body, however, that began as States- 
General, became a national assembly and was 
later known as the Constituante, a word or two 
may be added to emphasize points not yet suf- 
ficiently indicated. The assembly changed in 
opinion and attitude during the course of its 
history, and was vastly different in September 
1 79 1 from what it had been in May 1789. It 
did achieve the purpose of translating a large 
part of the demands of the cahiers into 
legislative enactments ; yet it did not learn the 
meaning of the word toleration, and it did not 
pave the way for liberty, but only for a doc- 
trine of liberty. 

The elections to the Legislative took place in 
September, under the influence of several cross 
currents of opinion. There was a slight re- 
action among certain classes in Paris in favour 
of the King, and several demonstrations took 



128 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

place which an abler and more active monarch 
might have turned to advantage. On the 
other hand, the Jacobin Club attempted to use 
its machinery to influence the action of the 
electoral meetings. As a result, when the dep- 
uties met on the ist of October, it was calcu- 
lated that about 400 belonged to the floating 
central mass, 136 to the Jacobins, that is, Jaco- 
bins in the new Robespierre-Danton sense, 264 
to the Feuillants. Among the latter there was 
a general inclination towards a policy of re- 
habilitating the royal power. 

The personnel of the new assembly differed 
totally from that of its predecessor, because of 
a self-denying ordinance whereby the members 
of the Constituante had excluded themselves 
from the new assembly. Yet there were many 
notable men among the new deputies, nearly 
all, however, Jacobins: — Brissot, the journal- 
ist, soon to be leader of a wing of the party 
that detaches itself from the one that fol- 
lows Robespierre; Vergniaud, great as an 
orator; Isnard, Guadet, Gensonne; Condorcet, 
marquis and mathematician, philosopher, phys- 
icist and republican, noble mind and practical 
thinker; Cambon, stalwart in politics as in 
finance; Couthon, hostile to Brissot, later to be 
one of the Robespierre triumvirate. 



WAR BREAKS OUT 129 

This Jacobin group nearly at once estab- 
lished its influence over the more flaccid part 
of the assembly. Through its club organiza- 
tion it packed the public galleries of the house, 
and from that point directed the current of 
opinion by the judicious application of ap- 
plause or disapproval. This was reinforced by 
the appel nominal, the manner of voting 
v^hereby each individual deputy could be com- 
pelled to enter the speaker's rostrum and there 
declare and explain his vote. 

To check the efforts of this dominating 
party, there was little but the inertia of the 
Court, and what the Feuillants might accom- 
plish. Bailly, La Fayette, Lameth, La Roche- 
foucauld Liancourt, Clermont Tonnerre were 
among the conspicuous men of the club, but 
whatever their worth most of them were asso- 
ciated with a too narrow, unyielding attitude 
to obtain any wide support. The popular 
force was not behind them, but, for the mo- 
ment, behind the Jacobins, and the instant the 
Jacobins became engaged in a struggle against 
the Feuillants, it pushed against the latter and 
presently toppled them over. Had the Feuil- 
lants and the Court come together, there was 
yet a chance that the tide would be stemmed. 
Btit that proved impossible. To the royal 



I30 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

family foreign help, foreign intervention, ap- 
peared the only chance of relief, and Marie 
Antoinette had long been urging her brother 
Leopold to come to her assistance. No course 
could have been more fatal, and the more prob- 
able intervention became, the more the demo- 
cratic party appeared a patriotic party, and the 
more the King and Queen seemed traitors to 
the national cause. 

It v^as the foreign question that immediately 
engrossed the chief attention of the Legisla- 
tive, and the foreign question always led back 
to the great internal one represented by 
the King. At Coblenz, in the dominions of 
the Archbishop of Trier, the Comte de Prov- 
ence had set up what was virtually a gov- 
ernment of his own. The emigres had 3,000 
or 4,000 men under arms, and a royal council 
organized, all that was necessary to administer 
France if she could be regained. The Legisla- 
tive now aimed a blow at them; the emigres 
were to return to France before the ist of 
January 1792, and those failing to do this 
were to be punishable by death. The decree 
was sent to the King who, unwilling to sign as- 
sent to the death of his brother and nobles, 
used his constitutional right of veto. 

This was the beginning of a conflict between 



WAR BREAKS OUT 131 

the assembly and the King, a struggle that 
showed the determination of the former not 
to recognise the right of veto prescribed by 
the Constitution. The Legislative followed its 
attack on the emigres by one on the priests. 
The clergy was discontented and, in the west, 
showed signs of inciting the peasantry to re- 
volt ; it was therefore decreed that every mem- 
ber of the clergy might be called on to take 
the oath to the civil constitution. This, again, 
the King vetoed, encouraged in his attitude by 
the Feuillants. The old struggle was being 
renewed ; Jacobins and Feuillants were fighting 
one another over the person of the King. 

There was one question, however, on which 
the Feuillants and Brissot's wing of the Jaco- 
bins agreed ; both wanted war. La Fayette, 
chief figure among the Feuillants^ had sunk 
rapidly in popularity since his repression of the 
mob in July. In October he had resigned his 
command of the national guard. In Novem- 
ber he had been defeated by the Jacobin Petion 
for the mayoralty of Paris. He now hoped for 
a military command, and saw in war the op- 
portunity for consolidating a victorious army 
by means of which the King and Constitution 
might be imposed on Paris. 

Brissot, ambitious and self-confident, his 



132 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

head turned at the prospect of a conflagra- 
tion, saw in a European war a field large 
enough in which to develop his untried states- 
manship. The pretexts for war lay ready to 
hand. There was not only the tense situation 
arising between Austria and France because 
of the relation between the two reigning fam- 
ilies, but there was also acute friction over 
certain territories belonging to German sover- 
eign princes, such as those of Salm or Montbe- 
liard, that were enclaved within the French bor- 
der. Could the extinction of the feudal rights 
hold over such territory as German princes 
held within the borders of France ? Such was 
the vexatious question which those princes 
were carrying to their supreme tribunal, that 
of the Emperor at Vienna. 

The opposition to the war was not so 
weighty. Louis realized the danger clearly 
enough, and knew that Austrian success would 
be visited on his head. Yet he was so help- 
less that he had to call the Feuillant nominee. 
Count Louis de Narbonne, his own natural 
cousin, to the ministry of war. The King was 
not alone in his opposition to the war, — Robes- 
pierre and Marat, nearly in accord, both stood 
for peace. Robespierre, from the first, had 
foreseen the course of the Revolution, had pro- 



WAR BREAKS OUT 133 

phetically feared the success of some soldier of 
fortune, — he was at this moment that unknown 
Heutenant of artillery, Napoleone Buonaparte, 
— who should with a stroke of the sword con- 
vert the Revolution to his purposes. Marat, in 
his more hectic, malevolent, uncertain way, 
was haunted by the same presentiment, and 
what he saw in war was this: "What afflicts 
the friends of liberty is that we have more to 
fear from success than from defeat . . . 
the danger is lest one of our generals be 
crowned with victory and lest ... he 
lead his victorious army against the capital to 
secure the triumph of the Despot. I invoke 
heaven that we may meet with constant defeat 
. . . and that our soldiers . . . drown 
their leaders in their own blood." — This Marat 
wrote on the 24th of April 1792, in his little 
pamphlet newspaper T Ami du peuple. 

During the first part of 1792 the popular 
agitation grew. France was now throwing all 
the enthusiasm, the vital emotion of patriotism 
into her internal upheaval. Rouget de Lisle 
invented his great patriotic hymn, christened in 
the following August the Marseillaise. Men 
who could get no guns, armed themselves with 
pikes. The red Phrygian cap of liberty was 
adopted. The magic word, citizen, became 



'^. 



■«*?:-.i: 



'*w,. 



134 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the cherished appellation of the multitude. 
And in the assembly the orators declaimed ve- 
hemently against the traitors, the supporters 
of the foreigner in their midst. Vergniaud, 
from the tribune of the assembly menacing 
the Austrian princess of the Tuileries, ex- 
claimed : "Through this window I perceive the 
palace where perfidious counsels delude the 
Sovereign. . . . Terror and panic have 
often issued from its portals; this day I bid 
them re-enter, in the name of the Law; let all 
its inmates know that it is the King alone who 
is inviolable, that the Law will strike the guilty 
without distinction, and that no head on which 
guilt reposes can escape its sword.'' 

The thunders of Vergniaud and the other 
Jacobin orators rolled not in vain. By March 
the Brissotins dominated the situation. They 
frightened the King into acquiescence in their 
war policy and they drove Narbonne and, the 
Fayettists, their temporary allies, from office, 
installing a new ministry made up of their own 
adherents. That new ministry included Ro- 
land, Claviere and Dumouriez; — Roland, a 
hard-headed, hard-working man of business, 
whose young wife with her beauty and enthusi- 
asm was to be the soul of the unfortunate Gi- 
rondin party; Claviere, a banker, speculator, 



WAR BREAKS OUT 135 

friend of Mirabeau, and generally doubtful lib- 
eral; Dumouriez, a soldier, able, adventurous, 
of large instincts political and human, ambi- 
tious and forceful beyond his colleagues. 

The Brissotin ministry was well equipped 
with talent, and was intended to carry through 
the war, which was voted by the assembly on 
the 20th of April. This step had been gradu- 
ally led up to by an acrimonious exchange of 
diplomatic votes. The war, now that it had 
broken out, was found to involve more powers 
than Austria. The king of Prussia, unwilling 
to let Austria pose as the sole defender of the 
Germanic princes of the Rhineland, had in 
August 1 79 1 joined the Emperor in the decla- 
ration of Pillnitz, threatening France with co- 
ercion. He now acted up to this, and joined 
in the war as the ally of the Emperor. Leo- 
pold died in March, and was succeeded by 
his son, Marie Antoinette's nephew, Francis 
IL 

Three armies were formed by France for the 
conflict, and were placed under the orders of 
Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Luckner. They 
were weak in numbers, as the fortresses 
soaked up many thousands of men, and unpre- 
pared for war. The allies concentrated their 
troops in the neighbourhood of Coblenz. The 



136 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Duke of Brunswick was placed in command, 
and by the end of July perfected arrangements 
for marching on Paris with an Austro-Prus- 
sian army of 80,000 men. 

The breaking out of war inflamed still fur- 
ther the political excitement of France. In 
April a festival, or demonstration, was held in 
honour of the soldiers of Chateauvieux' Swiss 
regiment, now released from the galleys. An- 
gry protests arose from the moderates, an 
echo of the assembly's vote of thanks to Bouille 
for repressing the mutineers six months be- 
fore. These protests, however, went un- 
heeded, for the Jacobins were now virtually 
masters of Paris. Not only did they control 
the public galleries of the assembly but they 
had gained a majority on the Commune and 
had secured for Manuel and Danton its legal 
executive offices of procureur and substitut. 

In May difficulties arose between the King 
and his ministers, arising partly from the ex- 
ercise of the power of veto once more. On the 
1 2th of June the ministers were forced from 
office and were replaced by moderates or Fay- 
ettists, Dumouriez going to the army to re- 
place Rochambeau. The Brissotin party, fu- 
rious at this defeat, decided on a monster dem- 



WAR BREAKS OUT 137 

onstration against the King for the 20th of 
June. 

The 20th of June 1792 was one of the great 
days of the Revolution, but, on the whole, less 
an insurrection than a demonstration. Out of 
the two great faubourgs of the working 
classes, St. Antoine and St. Marceaux, came 
processions of market porters, market women, 
coal heavers, workmen, citizens, with detach- 
ments of national guards here and there. 
Santerre, a popular brewer and national 
guard commander, appeared the leader; but 
the procession showed little sign of having 
recourse to violence. Bouquets were carried, 
and banners with various inscriptions such 
as: "We want union!" ''Liberty!'' One of 
the most extreme said: "Warning to Louis 
XVI: the people, weary of suffering, demand 
liberty or death!" 

Proceeding to the assembly a petition was 
tumultuously presented wherein it was de- 
clared that the King must observe the law, and 
that if he was responsible for the continued in- 
activity of the armies he must go. The mob 
then flowed on to the palace, was brought up 
by some loyal battalions of national guards; 
but presently forced one of the gates and irre- 



138 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

sistibly poured in. A disorderly scene fol- 
lowed. 

The King maintained his coolness and dig- 
nity. For four long hours the mob pushed 
through the palace, jostling, apostrophising, 
the King and Queen. A few national guards, 
a few members of the assembly, attempted to 
give Louis some sort of protection. But he 
was practically surrounded and helpless. 
What saved him was his coolness, his good 
sense, and the fact that there was no intent to 
do him bodily harm save among some groups 
too unimportant to make themselves felt. To 
please the men of the faubourgs Louis con- 
sented to place a red liberty cap on his head, 
and to empty a bottle of wine as a sign of fra- 
ternization. Finally Vergniaud and Petion 
succeeded in having the palace evacuated; and 
the assassination of Louis, which many had 
feared and a few hoped, had been averted. 



CHAPTER X 
THE MASSACRES 

THE event of the 20th of June was like 
lightning flashing in darkness. In- 
stantly people saw where they were. 
Moderate, loyal, reasonable men, startled at 
the danger of the King, smarting at the in- 
dignity he had suffered, fearful of mob rule 
and mob violence, rallied to the throne, signed 
petitions protesting against the event. Louis 
himself, realizing that his life was in jeopardy, 
made appeals both to the assembly and to his 
people. 

The first reply to the King's appeal, unso- 
licited and unappreciated, came from La Fay- 
ette. On receiving news of the event of the 
20th he left his headquarters and reached 
Paris on the 28th. He appealed to the as- 
sembly and rallied the centre, still responsive 
if a leader could be found. He then began 
to concert measures for getting control of the 
city by means of the national guards. At this 
point, however, his scheme failed. The Court 

139 



140 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

would not support him, the King too prudent, 
the Queen too impoHtic. Marie Antoinette 
herself, it is said, in her rancorous dislike of 
La Fayette, gave Petion the secret as to his 
contemplated use of the national guards; and 
this proved fatal. Checked by the action of the 
mayor and the Jacobins, unsupported by the 
Tuileries, La Fayette had to abandon his efforts. 

Another attempt followed. The Depart- 
ment of the Seine, presided by La Rochefou- 
cauld, tried to assert its constitutional author- 
ity over the great city situated within its limits. 
It voted the suspension of Petion, mayor of 
Paris, and of Manuel, his procureur, for dere- 
liction of duty in failing to maintain order on 
the 20th of June. 

The action of La Rochefoucauld in suspend- 
ing Petion took place on the 7th of July, a mo- 
ment at which the advance of the Duke of 
Brunswick was momentarily expected and at 
which the national excitement was tending to 
overpower the royalist reaction. This reac- 
tion was now checked. The Jacobins were re- 
solved to use mob pressure to whatever extent 
was necessary for accomplishing their purpose. 
On the nth they passed through the assembly 
a declaration that the country was in danger, 
and two days later imposed a vote quashing the 



THE MASSACRES 141 

action of the Department and reinstating Pe- 
tion. 

The ferment now blended inextricably the 
war fever and the action against the King. 
Volunteers were enrolling for the army. Na- 
tional guards were being summoned from the 
provinces to renew the federation of 1791, and 
the violent section of the agitators saw in these 
national guards the means for pushing over the 
royal authority. A demonstration better or- 
ganized than that of the 20th of June, and 
armed, could rid France of the Bourbon in- 
cubus. Preparations for such a demonstra- 
tion were at once taken in hand. 

Among the provincial troops now assembled 
in or marching towards Paris, there was no 
body more remarkable than the battalion of the 
300 Marseillais. Like a whirlwind of pa- 
triotic emotion they swept through France, 
dragging the cannon with which they meant 
to knock at the gates of the Tuileries, chanting 
Rouget's new song forever to be associated 
with the name of their own city. These Mar- 
seillais were red-hot republicans, and in judg- 
ing the political situation of that moment this 
constitutes one of the salient points. The 
Parisian patriots were on the whole far less 
republican than those of the provinces. 



142 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Among the men who were organizing the 
new demonstration the greater part meant 
nothing more than ridding themselves of 
Louis, of an executive officer whom they re- 
garded as treacherous and as secretly in 
league with the enemy. What should come 
after him they did not much consider. In the 
forming of this state of opinion the individ- 
ual action of Robespierre had played a great 
part. Robespierre, who feared in war the 
opportunity for the soldier, saw in republican- 
ism merely the triumph of a Cromwell; to 
him La Fayette was a tangible danger, the 
word repiihlic an empty formula. And so, 
with an influence still widening, despite his op- 
position to the war, he steadily preached the 
doctrine that the form of government was 
nothing so long as civil, social and political 
equality were secured. 

At the parade held on the 14th of July, — the 
Marseillais had not yet arrived, — there were 
no cries of Vive le roi, and none of, Vive la re- 
publique, but Vive la nation was the adopted 
formula. Yet at the same moment Billaud- 
Varennes, one of the most advanced of the 
Jacobins, was addressing the Club in favour 
of a republic; and the federes formed a cen- 
tral committee which on the 17th petitioned the 



THE MASSACRES 143 

assembly for the suspension of the King. To 
support the movement further the section 
committees were decreed in continuous ses- 
sion, and came under the control of the organ- 
ization. 

On the 30th of July, Brunswick crossed the 
frontier; the advance of his columns was her- 
alded by a proclamation or manifesto. In 
this document he announced to the people of 
France that he entered the country as the ally 
of their sovereign, and with the purpose of 
visiting on Paris an ^'exemplary and never-to- 
be-forgotten vengeance . . . military exe- 
cution and total subversion," and of bringing 
"the guilty rebels to the death they have de- 
served." Copies of the manifesto reached 
Paris on the 3rd of August, with immediate 
effect. To Louis the Prussian general's ut- 
terances appeared so incredible that they were 
promptly disavowed as a forgery. To the 
people they confirmed the suspicion that had 
been rankling for three long years, that had 
been envenomed by all the poison of Marat. 
A howl of execration arose, a howl not 
against Brunswick but against the inmates of 
the Tuileries; and in that howl the voices of 
the Marseillais, who had just reached the city, 
were raised loudest. 



144 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The inevitable result followed in just one 
week, a week spent in preparations by the pop- 
ular leaders. At one o'clock in the morning 
of the loth of August delegates from the sec- 
tions met at the Hotel de Ville and assumed 
control of the city. This body was joined by 
Danton, Marat and Hebert, among others, and 
of these Danton more than anyone else repre- 
sented the driving power. Orders were given 
for ringing the tocsin. All Paris knew the 
movement was coming, and understood the 
signal. 

At the Tuileries preparations for resistance 
had been made. The Marquis de Mandat 
took charge of the defence. He had about 
1,500 well-disposed national guards from the 
western or middle class districts, and about 
1,000 excellent Swiss infantry of the King's 
household troops. These he posted to good 
advantage, guarding the palace and the bridges 
over the Seine to the south. For a while all 
went well. The insurrection began slowly; 
and when it did roll up as far as the bridges 
Mandat's musketry held it easily at bay. 

The insurrectional Commune now realized 
that Mandat was a considerable obstacle and 
set to work to remove him. In his official sta- 
tion as a national guard commander he was 



THE MASSACRES 145 

under the jurisdiction of the mayor, so Petion 
was made to write, ordering him to report at 
the Hotel de Ville. Mandat dedined to obey. 
The attack still hung fire. The order was re- 
peated. Mandat, this time, weakly allowed 
himself to be persuaded into compliance. He 
proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, — and was 
butchered on the stairs by a band of in- 
surgents. 

After the defence had lost its general, and 
with daylight over the scene, events moved 
fast. The national guards at the palace could 
not be kept to their posts in the absence of their 
chief and in presence of the swelling numbers 
of the attackers. The defence of the bridges 
had to be given up and the Swiss withdrew 
into the palace. A lull followed while the in- 
surrection gathered up its strength for the at- 
tack on the Tuileries itself. 

During that lull, at half past eight, Louis, 
with his family, left the palace. He believed 
resistance useless ; he feared a massacre might 
occur; he was averse as ever to bloodshed; 
and so was persuaded that his best course 
would be to seek refuge in the assembly. 

Just as Louis left, the real attack was de- 
livered on the palace. The Swiss replied with 
musketry, sallied out, charged the insurgents 



146 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and drove them across the Carrousel; then 
they returned, and presently received a writ- 
ten order from the King bidding them not to 
fire. This momentarily paralyzed the defence. 
The insurgents, led by the provincial federes, 
were not yet beaten, but flowed back once 
more to the attack. Some field pieces which 
they had, breached the palace doors, a sharp 
struggle followed, and soon the insurgents had 
got a foothold. What followed was a mas- 
sacre. Many of the Swiss were cut down in 
the corridors and rooms of the palace. Others 
were mown down by musketry trying to escape 
across the Tuileries gardens. A few got 
away and sought refuge in a near-by church, 
but were there overtaken by the popular fury, 
and butchered. The rage of the people was 
unbridled, and success turned it into ferocity, 
even bestiality. The bodies of the Swiss were 
mutilated in an atrocious fashion. 

While the triumphant insurgents were sack- 
ing the palace and committing their barbarities 
on the unfortunate Swiss, Louis and his fam- 
ily remained unmolested in the assembly. 
They were to remain there for three days 
while their fate was being decided, temporary 
accommodation being found for them. The sit- 
uation was really this, that no party w^as yet 



THE MASSACRES 147 

quite prepared for the destruction of the King 
himself, only of the royal power. The as- 
sembly which, a year earlier, had assumed the 
position that the King was necessary to the 
constitution had now virtually abandoned it, 
and the Commune, while going much further 
than the assembly, was not yet ready to strike 
Louis. But it did claim the custody of the 
royal family, and that, after a three days' 
struggle, the assembly conceded. On the 13th 
of August the royal family went to imprison- 
ment in the Temple, a small mediaeval dungeon 
in the central quarter of Paris. 

Only about three hundred members of the 
assembly were present to face the storm when 
Louis sought refuge in its midst. Vergniaud 
was president. Presently the Commune sent 
a request that the assembly should depose the 
King. Vergniaud thereupon proposed a mid- 
dle course; the assembly could suspend the 
King from his functions and call together a 
convention to solve the constitutional ques- 
tion that the suspension of the Executive pre- 
sented; in the meanwhile ministers elected by 
the assembly should constitute a provisional 
Executive Council. These proposals were 
carried, and the Executive Council was 
elected; it contained most of the members of the 



148 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Brissotin ministry, but with a new member. 
At the head of the poll was Danton, and Dan- 
ton was made Minister of Justice. 

Danton now clearly appears as the man 
of the situation. The people had triumphed, 
and Danton was the statesman of the people. 
He bridged the gap between the Commune and 
the assembly. He gave rein to the popular 
fury and to the destruction of every anti-pop- 
ular influence, and he attempted, by placing 
himself at the head of the flood, to direct it 
against the great external danger that men- 
aced France. 

On the nth of August the assembly decreed 
that universal suffrage should be put in force 
for the elections to the convention. Large 
police powers were voted to the Commune, 
which Robespierre now joined; and laws were 
passed aimed against those suspected of be- 
ing in sympathy with the advancing army or 
with Louis. The appel nominal was placed in 
force in many of the sections, and Danton put 
the machinery of his ministry at work to rein- 
force these measures, to convert them to use for 
terrorizing the moderates,, for satisfying the 
popular suspicions against the aristocrats, for 
weighing on the elections. The primaries were 
to begin on the 27th of August, those for Paris 



THE MASSACRES 149 

on the 26. of September ; the meeting of electors 
for nominating the deputies of Paris was to 
take place on the Sth of September. 

Meanwhile Brunswick's columns were mak- 
ing steady, methodical progress through the 
hills of Lorraine, through the frontier belt of 
fortresses. The French armies in their front 
were weak in numbers, even weaker in leader- 
ship. La Fayette, who had attempted to re- 
affirm the constitution on hearing of the event 
of the loth of August, deemed it prudent to 
ride over the frontier when commissioners of 
the assembly reached his camp; he was seized 
as a prisoner by the allies to remain their cap- 
tive for many years. On the 20th the Prus- 
sian guns opened on Longwy; on the 23rd it 
surrendered. On the 30th the siege of Ver- 
dun was begun, Verdun which Louis had so 
nearly reached the year before. It was gen- 
erally known that the fortress could not stand 
more than a few days. Between it and Paris 
there was only the Argonne, a few miles of 
hilly passes, and then 100 miles of open coun- 
try. 

The steady advance of Brunswick drove 
Paris into a state approaching delirium. On 
the news of the fall of Longwy reaching the 
city, the extremists, their appetites whetted by 



150 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the butchery of the Swiss, began to plot a mas- 
sacre of the poHtical prisoners, of the royaHsts, 
of the suspect. On the 28th of August Dan- 
ton, riding on the wings of the storm, asked 
power from the Commune to carry out dom- 
icihary visits for the purpose of arresting sus- 
pects. This power was granted, and in three 
days the prisons were filled to overflowing, 
priests and persons of title being specially 
singled out for arrest. 

By the ist of September Paris was ready to 
answer the Duke of Brunswick, was ready for 
the stroke that was to destroy the anti-revolu- 
tionists, that was to strike terror to the 
hearts of all enemies of the people. But the 
awfulness of the deed delayed its execution. 
The day passed in high-wrought excitement; 
at any moment news might arrive of the fall 
of Verdun, — that might be the signal for the 
explosion of the popular fury. 

On the 2d there was still no news of Verdun, 
but the moment could not be delayed much 
longer. In the night preparations had been 
made. Men to do the business of popular ex- 
ecution had been approached; some had been 
offered pay. The leaders were determined to 
carry through their enterprise. . In the as- 
sembly Danton thundered from the tribune: 



THE MASSACRES 151 

"Verdun has not yet surrendered. One part 
of the people will march to the frontier, an- 
other will throw up intrenchments, and the 
rest will defend our cities with pikes. Paris 
will second these great efforts. The assembly 
will become a war committee. We demand 
that whoever refuses to serve shall be punished 
by death. The tocsin you will hear presently 
is not a signal of alarm ; it is ringing the charge 
against the enemies of our country. To con- 
quer them we must be audacious, yet more 
audacious, and still more audacious, and 
France is saved." 

The tocsin rang, as Danton had ordered; 
alarm guns were fired; drummers woke the 
echoes of the streets and of the squares, and 
presently the deed of supreme audacity and of 
supreme horror began to come into being. 
Crowds collected about the prisons. Groups 
forced a way in. More or less improvised 
committees took possession, and massacre be- 
gan. 

The massacre of September is one of the most 
lurid events of the Revolution, easier therefore 
for the romancist to deal with than for the his- 
torian. Its horrors are quite beyond question. 
At one point, Bicetre, the killing continued 
until late on the 6th, nearly four days. The 



152 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

total number of victims was very large, pos- 
sibly between 2,000 and 3,000. At many 
places the slaughter was indiscriminate, ac- 
companied by nameless barbarities, carried out 
by gangs of brutal ruffians who were soon in- 
toxicated with gore and with wine. But 
alongside of these aspects were others more 
difficult to do justice to, but the careful weigh- 
ing of which is necessary if any just estimate 
of the event is to be reached. 

The massacring was carried out by a small 
number of individuals, perhaps two or three 
hundred in all, and of these a considerable 
proportion undoubtedly acted in a spirit of 
blind political and social rage, and in the belief 
that they were carrying out an act of justice. 
A large mass of citizens gave the massacres 
their approval by forming crowds about the 
prison doors. As to these crowds there are 
two salient facts. The first is that on the first 
day they were large and excited, and 
afforded that moral support without which the 
massacres could hardly have been carried out. 
After the first day they diminished rapidly ; and 
by the end of the third day all popular support 
was gone, and a feeling of horror had seized 
on the city and supplanted everything else. 
Then again the mob, as it crowded about the 



THE MASSACRES 153 

prison doors, showed a marked attitude. 
Many of the prisoners, those who were so 
lucky as to pass for good citizens and friends 
of the people, were released. As these came 
out the crowd received them with every sign of 
joy and of fraternization. When on the con- 
trary it was a victim coming out to be slaugh- 
tered, there was silence, no shouting, no exulta- 
tion. 

In other words, the event was, with most, an 
act of popular justice, and this was the ap- 
pearance it had even when seen from the in- 
terior of the prisons. At TAbbaye Maillard 
presided over the self-appointed tribunal, and 
it is impossible to doubt that, whenever he was 
satisfied that the prisoner deserved his freedom, 
he attempted to secure his life. The case of 
St. Meard, an aristocrat, a colonel, who had 
enough good sense and courage to speak 
plainly to the judges, avowing himself a royal- 
ist but persuading them that he took no part 
in anti-revolutionary schemes, is most illu- 
minating. Maillard declared he saw no harm 
in him; he was acquitted; and was fraternally 
embraced by the crowd when he safely passed 
the fatal door. 

All did not have the good fortune of St 
Meard. The case of the Princesse de Lam- 



154 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

balle, at La Force, must serve to give the worst 
side of, and to close, this chapter of blood. 
Long the friend, confidante and agent of the 
Queen, she had followed her to the Temple, 
and had been removed from there but a few 
days previously. She was too well known and 
too near Marie Antoinette to have any chance 
of escape. In a fainting condition she was 
dragged before the tribunal, and was soon 
passed out to the executioners. It is not prob- 
able that she had much consciousness of what 
followed. The gang of murderers at this 
point were butchers of the Halles, and they 
apparently treated their victim as they might 
have a beast brought to the slaughter. She 
was carried under the arms to where a pile 
of bodies had accumulated, and, in a moment 
made ready, was butchered in the technical 
sense of the term. Her head was hoisted on 
a pike, as also other parts of her dismembered 
anatomy, and carried in triumph to be dis- 
played under the windows of the prisoners at 
the Temple. 

Verdun fell on the 2d of September, at the 
very moment when Danton was announcing 
its continued resistance. On the 5th the Duke 
of Brunswick resumed his march on Paris, and 



THE MASSACRES 155 

on the same day, the electors of that city met 
and chose twenty deputies to the convention; 
their choice was coloured by the fact that the 
massacres were still continuing. At the head 
of the poll stood Robespierre; Danton was 
next; among the others may be noted Camille 
Desmoulins, Marat, and, last of all, the due 
d'Orleans, who a few days later metamor- 
phosed his Bourbon name into Philippe 
Egalite, 

Throughout France the electoral process was 
everywhere giving much the same result. 
Less than one-tenth of the electors used their 
franchise; and the extreme party won great 
successes. By the middle of September the new 
deputies were reaching Paris. The Legisla- 
tive in its last moments was feeble and undig- 
nified. Marat threatened it with massacre, 
and declared that its members were as much 
the enemies of the country as were the impris- 
oned aristocrats. Under this menace the Leg- 
islative watched the massacres of September 
without raising a hand to protect its unfortu- 
nate victims. Danton did the same. As min- 
ister of Justice the prisoners and the tribunals 
were under his special charge. But although 
he may have facilitated the escape of some 
individuals, and although he took no direct 



156 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

part, yet he believed that no government could 
be established strong enough to save the Rev- 
olution, at such a crisis as it had reached, save 
by paying this toll of blood to the suspicion, the 
vengeance, the cruelty, the justice of the peo- 
ple. He dared to pay the price, and later he, 
and he alone, dared to shoulder the responsi- 
bility. 



CHAPTER XI 

ENDING THE MONARCHY 

ON the 20th and 21st of September 1792 
the Convention met, the Bourbon mon- 
archy fell, and the Duke of Brunswick 
was defeated, a coincidence of memorable 
events. 

Brunswick, pushing on from Verdun into 
the defiles of the Argonne, had two armies 
operating against him, trying to stop his 
march; the one under Dumouriez, the other 
under Kellermann. He forced a way, how- 
ever, but at the further side, about the hills of 
Valmy, had to face the combined armies of his 
adversaries. Brunswick was now much re- 
duced by sickness, and was much worried over 
supplies and his lengthening line of communi- 
cations. In a faint-hearted way he deployed 
for attack. Dumouriez for the moment 
checked him by a skillful disposition of his su- 
perior artillery. But if the superbly drilled 
Prussian infantry were sent forward it seemed 
as though the result could not be long in doubt. 

157 



158 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Brunswick methodically and slowly made his 
preparations for the attack, but just at the mo- 
ment when it should have been delivered, Du- 
mouriez, divining his opponent's hesitation, im- 
posed on him. Riding along the French front 
with his staff he placed his hat on the point 
of his sword and rode forward, singing the 
Marseillaise. His whole army catching the 
refrain advanced towards the enemy; and 
Brunswick at once took up a defensive atti- 
tude, which he maintained till the close of the 
battle. The unsteady battalions and half- 
drilled volunteers of Dumouriez had suddenly 
revealed the fact that they were a: national 
army, and that they possessed the most 
formidable of military weapons, patriotism. 
That was an innovation in 18th-century war- 
fare, an innovation that was to result in some 
notable triumphs. At Valmy it led to the 
Prussians retiring from a battle field on which 
they had left only a few score of dead. Soon 
afterwards Brunswick began a retreat that 
was to lead him back to the Rhine. 

On the day after Valmy, the Convention as- 
sembled. The extreme Jacobins, soon to be 
known from their seats in the assembly as the 
Mountain, numbered about fifty. Danton and 



ENDING THE MONARCHY 159 

Robespierre were the two most conspicuous; 
among their immediate supporters not hitherto 
mentioned may be noted Carnot, Fouche, Tal- 
Hen, and St. Just. A much larger group, of 
which the moderate Jacobins formed the 
backbone, were incHned to look to Brissot for 
leadership and are generally described as 
Girondins. This name came from the small 
group of the deputies of the Gironde, that rep- 
resented perhaps better than any other, the 
best force of provincial liberalism but at the 
same time a revolt against terrorism, massa- 
cre and the supremacy of Paris. Within the 
last sixty years, however, the term Girondin 
has come into use as a label for all those pos- 
itive political elements in the Convention that 
attempted a struggle against the Mountain for 
leadership and against Paris for moderate and 
national government. Among the Girondins 
may be noted Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, 
and the Anglo-American veteran of republic- 
anism, Tom Paine. Between the Mountain 
and the Gironde sat the Plaine, or the Marais, 
as it was called, that non-committal section 
of the house strongest in numbers but weakest 
'in moral courage, where sat such men as 
Barras, Barere, Cambon, Gregoire, Lanjuinais, 



i6o FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Sieyes. These were the men who mostly 
drifted, and, as the Mountain triumphed, threw 
into it many more or less sincere recruits. 

The first business of the new assembly was 
pressing; it did not comport much variation 
of opinion. The constitutional question must 
be settled; and so a vote, immediately taken, 
pronounced the fall of the monarchy. Even at 
this moment, however, there was no enthu- 
siasm for a republic and there was no formal 
pronouncement that France accepted that re- 
gime. Yet in fact she had; and on the fol- 
lowing day the Convention, in further decrees, 
assumed the existence of the Republic to be 
an established fact. 

There was a question, however, even more 
burning, because more debatable, than the fall 
of the monarchy; and this was the massacres, 
and beyond the massacres, the policy of the 
party that had accepted them. The great ma- 
jority of the deputies on arriving in Paris from 
the provinces had been horror-struck. Lan- 
juinais said: 'When I arrived in Paris, I 
shuddered!" Brissot and the Girondins put 
that feeling of the assembly behind their policy. 
They adopted an attitude of uncompromising 
condemnation towards the men of September, 
and attempted to wrest their influence from 



ENDING THE MONARCHY i6i 

them. To accomplish this they had among 
other things to outbid their rivals for popular 
support, and so it happened that many of them 
who were at heart constitutional monarchists 
adopted a strong republican attitude which 
went beyond their real convictions. 

The Girondins attacked at once. The con- 
duct of the Commune, of the sectional com- 
mittees was impugned. Marat, on taking his 
seat, was subjected to a furious onslaught that 
nearly ended in actual violence. But he 
packed the galleries with his supporters, re- 
torted bitterly in the Ami du peuple, and 
succeeded in weathering the storm. But the 
Convention agreed that a committee of six 
should investigate, and that a guard of 4,500 
men should be drawn from the departments for 
the protection of the Convention. This was 
a worthy beginning, but it ended, as it began, 
in words. Paris answered the Girondins 
with deeds. 

The proposed bringing in of an armed force 
from the departments stirred Paris to fury 
once more. Brissot was expelled from the 
Jacobin Club. Many of the sections pre- 
sented petitions protesting against the depart- 
mental guard. But for a while the moderates 
held their ground, even appeared to gain a 



i62 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

little. Addresses kept reaching the assembly 
from the departments protesting against the 
domination of Paris. Small detachments of 
loyal national guards arrived in the city; and 
in November, on an election being held for the 
mayoralty of Paris, although very few voters 
went to the polls, the Jacobins failed to carry 
their candidate. It was to be their last defeat 
before the 9th of Thermidor. 

It was at this moment that took place the 
famous iron chest incident. A safe was dis- 
covered and broken open during the perquisi- 
tions made in the palace of the Tuileries. 
Roland placed in the custody of the house a 
packet of papers found in this safe, and among 
these papers were accounts showing the sums 
paid to Mirabeau, and to other members of the 
assembly, by the Court. There resulted much 
abuse of Mirabeau, whose body was removed 
from the Pantheon where it had been cere- 
moniously interred, and also much political 
pressure on deputies who either were or feared 
to be incriminated. 

A number of the young Girondins were now 
meeting constantly at Madame Roland's, and 
their detestation of the Mountain was 
heightened and idealized by the enthusiasms of 
their charming hostess. Louvet, brilliant, am- 



ENDING THE MONARCHY 163 

bitious, hot-headed, threw himself into the con- 
flict, and, on the 29th of October, launched a 
tremendous philippic against Robespierre. As 
oratory it was successful, but it failed in 
political effect. After their ill success against 
Marat, the Girondins stood no chance of suc- 
cess against Robespierre unless their words 
led to immediate action, unless their party was 
solid and organized, unless they had some 
means of obtaining a practical result. In all 
this they failed. Robespierre obtained a delay 
to prepare his reply, and then a careful speech 
and packed galleries triumphed over Louvet's 
ill-judged attack. 

The Mountain had survived the first storms. 
It was soon able to use the question of the 
King as a means of distracting attention from 
the massacres, and of giving the party a ground 
on which it might hope to meet the Gironde 
on more even terms. For any attempt at mod- 
eration on the part of the Girondins could be 
met with the charge of veiled royalism, of 
anti-patriotism, and such a charge at that 
moment was the most damning that a party 
or an individual could incur. 

The Convention, having agreed that it would 
consider the question of Louis, and having ap- 
pointed a committee to that end, heard the 



i64 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

report of its committee on the 3rd of 
November. From this it appeared that there 
were numerous charges that could be preferred 
against Louis; but what was the tribunal be- 
fore which such charges could be tried? 
There could be but one answer. Only the 
people of France could judge Louis, and the 
Convention stood for the people. Lengthy de- 
bates followed on these questions, and the 
speech of Robespierre, a speech in which he 
stood nearly alone in taking a logical view of 
the situation, was perhaps its most remarkable 
product. Robespierre said: *'The assembly 
has been drawn off on side issues. There is 
no question here of a legal action. Louis is 
not an accused person; you are not judges, — 
you are only representatives of the nation. It 
is not for you to render judgment, but to take 
a measure of national security. . . . Louis 
was king, and the republic has come into ex- 
istence; the wonderful question you are debat- 
ing is resolved by these words. Louis was 
dethroned for his crimes ; Louis denounced the 
people of France as rebels ; he called to chastise 
them the armies of his brother tyrants to his 
help; victory and the people have decided 
that he alone is the rebel ; Louis therefore can- 
not be judged because he has been judged. He 



ENDING THE MONARCHY 165 

stands condemned, or if not, then the republic 
stands not acquitted. . . . For if Louis 
can be the subject of an action, Louis may be 
pronounced guiltless. ... A people does 
not judge after the manner of a judicial body; 
it does not render sentence, it launches the 
thunderbolt.'' 

On the same day, the 3rd of December, with- 
out accepting Robespierre's point of view, the 
Convention voted that the King should be 
brought to trial. The Gironde, feeling the 
current now drawing them fast to a catas- 
trophe, attempted, in feeble fashion, to change 
its direction, urging that an appeal should be 
made to the country. This failed, and a week 
later Louis was brought before the assembly. 

The royal family had been kept in very strict 
confinement at the Temple. The Commune 
officials in whose charge they were placed were 
for the most part men of the lower classes, 
brutal, arrogant, suspicious, and somewhat op- 
pressed with responsibility and the fear of 
possible attempts at a rescue. In these con- 
ditions the royal family suffered severely, and, 
under suffering, rapidly began to regain some 
of the ground they had lost while fortune 
smiled. Against insult the royal dignity as- 
serted itself, and in adversity the simplicity and 



i66 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

kindliness of Louis began rather suddenly to 
look like something not so very remote from 
saintliness; such is the relation of surround- 
ings and background to the effect produced by a 
man's life and character. 

Before the Convention, on the nth of 
December, Louis, mild and dignified, listened 
in some bewilderment to a long list of so-called 
charges, of which the most salient accused him 
of complicity with Bouille in a plot against his 
subjects, and of having broken his oath to the 
constitution. When asked what answer he 
had to make, he denied the charges, and de- 
manded time to prepare a defence and to 
obtain legal assistance. This was granted, 
and an adjournment was taken. From all of 
which it appears that Louis accepted the false 
ground which the Convention had marked out 
for him, and lacked the logical sense of Robes- 
pierre. 

During the adjournment, which was for two 
weeks, the Girondins made one more attempt 
to dodge the issue, to refer the trial of the 
King to the electorate. Behind them was a 
great mass of opinion. The department of 
Finisterre passed resolutions demanding the 
suspension of Marat, Robespierre and Dan- 



ENDING THE MONARCHY 167 

ton; it approached the neighbouring depart- 
ments with a view to combining their armed 
forces and sending them to Paris. Even with 
such demonstrations to strengthen their hands 
the Girondins were in too false a position, were 
too much orators and not men of action, to 
save themselves; Paris held them inexorably 
to their detested task. 

On the 26th, the trial was resumed, and, 
save for judgment, concluded. Louis was in 
charge of Santerre, commanding the national 
guard of Paris. His advocates, Malesherbes, 
Tronchet and de Seze, did their duty with 
courage and ability, after which the King 
was removed, and the Convention resolved it- 
self into a disorderly and clamorous meeting 
in which the public galleries added as much to 
the din as the members themselves. 

More debates followed, of which the turn 
was reached on the 3rd of January, On that 
day Barere, most astute of those who sat in the 
centre, keenest to detect the tremor of the 
straw that showed which way public passion 
was about to blow, ascended the tribune and 
delivered his opinion. Anxiously the house 
hung on the words of the oracle of moral 
cowardice, and heard that oracle pronounce 



i68 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the destruction of the King as a measure of 
pubHc safety. From that moment all attempts 
to save him were in vain. 

The Girondins did not confine themselves 
to numerous efforts to displace the responsi- 
bility of judging from the Convention to the 
people. Three days after Barere's speech 
Dumouriez arrived in Paris. As La Fayette 
had a few months before, so did Dumouriez 
now, appear to be the man of the sword so 
dreaded by Robespierre, the successful soldier 
ready to convert the Revolution to his own 
profit, or if not to his own to that of his party, 
the Girondins. During more than two weeks 
Dumouriez remained in the city, casting about 
for some means of saving the King, but con- 
stantly checked by the Jacobins, who through 
Pache, minister of war, kept control of the ar- 
tillery and troops near Paris. 

On the 15th of January the Convention came 
to a vote, amid scenes of intense excitement. 
Was Louis guilty? And if so what should be 
his punishment? Six hundred and eighty- 
three members voted affirmatively to the first 
question. Three hundred and sixty-one voted 
the penalty of death. About the same number 
equivocated in a variety of forms, the most 
popular proving the one that declared for im- 



ENDING THE MONARCHY. 169 

prisonment or exile, to be changed to death in 
case of invasion. Vergniaud, as president, at 
the end of a session that lasted 36 hours, de- 
clared the sentence of the Convention to be 
death. 

On the 19th of January one last effort was 
made. A motion for a respite was proposed, 
but was rejected, 380 to 310; and the Con- 
vention then fixed the 21st as the day for the 
King's execution. On that day Louis accord- 
ingly went to the scaffold. The guillotine was 
set up in the great open space known at 
various epochs as the Place Louis XV, de la 
Revolution, and de la Concorde. Louis, after 
a touching farewell from his family, and after 
confessing whatever he imagined to be his 
sins, was driven from the Temple to the place 
of execution; he was dressed in white. The 
streets were thronged. The national guard 
was out in force, and when Louis from the 
platform attempted to speak, Santerre ordered 
his drums to roll. A moment later the head 
of King Louis XVI had fallen, and many 
mourning royalists were vowing loyalty in 
their hearts to the little boy of eight, im- 
prisoned in the temple, who to them was King 
Louis XVII. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 

THE disappearance of Louis XVI from 
the scene left the Mountain and the 
Gironde face to face, to wage their 
faction fight, a fight to the knife ; while France 
in her armies more nobly maintained her 
greater struggle on the frontier. There for 
a while after Valmy all had prospered. 
Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A 
French army under the Marquis de Custine 
had overrun all the Rhineland as far as 
Mainz. Dumouriez, transferred from the 
Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had invaded 
the Austrian Netherlands. On the 6th of 
November he won a considerable victory at 
Jemmappes, and towards the end of December, 
he controlled most of the province. 

The Convention, elated at these successes, 
issued decrees proclaiming a crusade against 
the European tyrannies, and announcing the 
propaganda of the principles of liberty. But 
in practice the French invasion did not gen- 

170 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE 171 

erally produce very edifying results. Gener- 
als and troops plundered unmercifully, to 
make up for the disorganization of their 
own service and lack of pay, and even the 
French Government imposed the expenses of 
the war on the countries that had to support 
its horrors. 

The close of the year 1792 marked a 
period of success. The opening of 1793, 
however, saw the pendulum swing back. 
New enemies gathered about France. Sar- 
dinia, whose province of Savoy had been in- 
vaded, now had a considerable army in the 
field. At short intervals after the execution 
of Louis, England, Holland, Spain, joined the 
coalition. And the Convention light-heartedly 
accepted this accumulation of war. To face 
the storm it appointed in January a committee 
of general defence of twenty-five members; 
but Danton alone would have done better than 
the twenty-five. While the trial of the King 
proceeded he was casting about for support 
in the assembly for a constructive policy. He 
stretched a hand to the Girondins; they re- 
fused it; and Danton turned back to the 
Mountain once more, compelled to choose be- 
tween two factions the one that was for the 
moment willing to act with him. 



172 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Through February and into March the mil- 
itary situation kept getting worse, and the 
Mountain made repeated attacks on the 
Gironde. On the Sth of March news reached 
Paris that the Austrians had captured Aix-la- 
Chapelle, and that the French general 
Miranda had been compelled to abandon his 
guns and to retire from before Maestricht, 
which he was besieging. Danton, who 
was in the north, arranging the annexation 
of the Netherlands to France, started for Paris 
at once. On the 14th the capital heard, with 
amazement and alarm, that the Vendee had 
risen in arms for God and King Louis XVII. 

The Vendee was a large district of France, 
a great part of the ancient province of Poitou, 
lying just to the south of the Loire and near 
the Atlantic Ocean. A great part of the 
country was cut up by tracts of forest and 
thick and numerous hedges. The peasants 
were fairly prosperous, and well-affected to the 
priests and seigneurs. The latter were mostly 
resident landlords, holders of small estates, 
living near and on kindly terms* with their 
peasantry. The priests and nobles had long 
viewed the Revolution with aversion, an 
aversion intensified by the proclamation of the 
Republic and the execution of the King. And 




FALL OF THE GIRONDE 173 

when, on the 26th of February, the Convention 
passed an army ballot law and sent agents to 
press recruits among the villages of the Ven- 
dee, the peasants joined their natural leaders 
and rose in arms against the Government. 
The Vendeens were, in their own country, 
formidable opponents. They had born leaders, 
men who showed wonderful courage, dash, and 
loyalty. They prayed before charging an 
enemy, and on the march or in battle sang 
hymns, always the most irresistible of battle 
songs. Their badges were the white flag, the 
Bourbon lilies, and the cross. For awhile 
they swept everything before them. 

Danton arrived in Paris on the 8th of March. 
He immediately attempted to reconcile the fac- 
tions of the assembly, and to persuade its 
members to turn their wasted vigour into war 
measures. From neither side did he receive 
much encouragement. To his demands for 
new levies and volunteer regiments, Robes- 
pierre replied that the most urgent step was to 
purify the army of its anti-revolutionary 
elements. To his proposal that the executive 
should be strengthened by composing the min- 
istry of members of the Convention, the Giron- 
dins opposed their implacable suspicion and 
hatred. But Paris had long been working up 



174 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

its hostility to the Gironde; an insurrectional 
committee had just come into existence that 
aimed at dealing with them after the fashion 
in which it had dealt with Louis on the loth of 
August ; and the Girondins' stand against Dan- 
ton precipitated the outbreak. 

On the 9th of March a premature and imper- 
fectly organized insurrection occurred, directed 
against the Gironde. The demonstrators 
marched against the Convention, but were held 
in check by a few hundred well-affected pro- 
vincial national guards. On the loth it became 
known that Dumouriez was severely pressed by 
the Austrians and in danger of being cut off. 
Under the influence of this news, and with the 
Girondins showing little fight because of the 
event of the day before, the Convention passed 
a measure of terrorism; it voted the establish- 
ment of a Revolutionary Tribunal to judge 
''traitors, conspirators, and anti-revolution- 
ists." In vain Buzot and other Girondins 
pointed out that this meant establishing ''a 
despotism worse than the old." Danton, un- 
quenchably opportunist, supported the meas- 
ure, and it was carried. Immediately after 
this he left Paris for the frontier once more. 

On the 1 8th of March Dumouriez was se- 
verely defeated at Neerwinden. And now not 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE 175 

only was the Vendee in arms, but Lyons, Mar- 
seilles, Normandy, appeared on the point of 
throwing off the yoke of Paris and of the Jaco- 
bins; the situation looked well-nigh desperate. 
A week later the papers published letters of 
Dumouriez which showed that ever since the 
trial of the King the Girondin general had been 
factious, that is, had been as much inclined to 
turn his arms against Paris as against the 
Austrians. Danton was now back from the 
frontier; he and Robespierre were at once 
elected to the committee of general defence; 
and that commitee declared itself in continu- 
ous session. 

Extraordinary measures were now passed in 
quick succession which, added to the creation 
of the Revolutionary Tribunal, made up a for- 
midable machinery of terrorism. Deputies of 
the Convention were sent out on mission to su- 
perintend the working of the armies and of the 
internal police. They were given the widest 
powers, — were virtually ' made pro-dictators. 
On the 1st of April was passed a new law of 
suspects to reinforce the action of the represen- 
tatives on mission and of the Revolutionary 
Tribunal. On the 6th of April was created the 
executive power that Danton urged the need of 
so pertinaciously; this was the Committee of 



176 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Public Safety, a body of nine members of the 
Convention, acting secretly, directing the min- 
isters, and having general control of the execu- 
tive functions. The Girondins had to submit 
to the measure, and their opponents secured 
control of the Committee. Among its first 
members were Danton, Cambon, and Barere. 

Just as the Committee of Public Safety came 
into existence the situation on the frontier was 
getting even worse. On the 4th of April 
Dumouriez, fearing that the Convention would 
send him to the Revolutionary Tribunal, made 
an attempt to turn his army against the Gov- 
ernment, and failing, rode over into the Aus- 
trian lines. At the same time, Custine was 
being driven out of Alsace by the Prussians, 
who, on the 14th of April, laid siege to Mainz. 

With the Mountain immensely strengthened 
by the formation of the Committee of Public 
Safety, the attack on the Girondins increased 
in vigour. Robespierre accused them of com- 
plicity with Dumouriez in treasonable in- 
tentions against the Republic. The Gironde 
retaliated, and, on the 13th of April, succeeded 
in rallying a majority of the Convention in a 
second onslaught against Marat for his incen- 
diary articles. It was decreed that the Ami du 
peuple should be sent to the Revolutionary 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE 177 

Tribunal. It was the last success of the Gi- 
rondins, and it did not carry them far. The 
Jacobins closed their ranks against this as- 
sault. They had the Commune and the Revo- 
lutionary Tribunal under their control. The 
former body sent a petition to the Convention 
demanding the exclusion of twenty-tv^o promi- 
nent Girondins as enemies of the Revolution; 
and a few days later the Tribunal absolved Ma- 
rat of all his sins. 

Incidentally to the bitter struggle between 
the two factions, great questions, social, po- 
litical, economic, were being debated, though 
not with great results. They could really all 
be brought back to the one fundamer^tal ques- 
tion which the course of the Revolution *^had 
brought to the surface. What was to be the 
position of the poor man, and especially of 
the poor man in the modern city and under 
industrial surroundings, — what was to be his 
position in the new form of social adjustment 
which the Revolution was bringing about? 
What about the price of food? the monopoly 
of capital? the private ownership of property? 
Such were some of the questions that under- 
lay the debates of the Convention in the spring 
of 1793. 

The food question was dealt with in various 



178 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ways. The famous law of the Maximum, 
passed on the 3rd of May, attempted to regu- 
late the prices of food by a sliding scale tariff. 
The measure was economically unsound, and in 
many ways worked injustice; it alarmed prop- 
erty holders and alienated them from the Gov- 
ernment. On its own initiative the Commune 
made great efforts, and with some success, to 
maintain the food supply of the city, and to 
keep down the price of bread. Spending about 
12,000 francs a day, less than half a sou per 
head, it succeeded for the most part in keeping 
bread down to about 3 sous per pound. 

But by virtue of what theory of government 
were the poor entitled to this special protec- 
tion? Was the Jacobin party prepared to ad- 
vance towards a socialist or coUectivist form 
of government? Of that there was no sign; 
and several years were yet to pass before 
Babeuf was to give weight to a coUectivist 
theory of the State. There were special rea- 
sons of some force to explain why the Con- 
vention, however much it might be addicted to 
humanitarian theories, however anxious it 
might be to curry favour with the lowest class, 
should keep a stiff attitude on the question of 
collectivism and property. The whole finan- 
cial system of the Revolution, endorsed by the 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE 179 

Convention as by its predecessors, was based on 
the private proprietorship of land and on in- 
creasing the number of small proprietors. 
Not only was the Convention bound to main- 
tain the effect of the large sales of national 
lands that had already taken place, but the 
prejudices and temper of its members made in 
the same direction. Robespierre, trying to 
reconcile the narrow logic of a lawyer with the 
need of pleasing his ardent supporters, based 
his position on a charitable and not on a po- 
litical motive: "Public assistance is a sacred 
debt of Society. Society is under the obliga- 
tion of securing a living for all its* members, 
either by procuring work for them, or by se- 
curing the necessaries of existence to those who 
are past work.'' 

Although the Convention maintained a con- 
servative attitude in regard to the question of 
real property, it was decidedly inclined towards 
a confiscatory policy in all that related to per- 
sonal wealth. This did not, however, become 
well marked until after the conclusion of the 
great struggle between the Mountain and the 
Gironde, which entered its last phase in May. 

On the 1 2th of that month the Convention 
voted the formation of an army of sans-culot- 
tes for the defence of Paris, a measure of more 



i8o FRENCH REVOLUTION 

significance for the internal than for the ex- 
ternal affairs of France. On the 14th the 
Gironde made their reply by reading an address 
of the city of Bordeaux offering to march to 
Paris to help the Convention. On the 15th the 
Commune proceeded to appoint one of its 
nominees as provisional general of the national 
guard of Paris. And on the following day the 
Girondins, alarmed into an attempt at action, 
proposed to the assembly that the municipal 
authorities of Paris should be removed from 
office and that the substitutes for the deputies 
to the Convention should be assembled at 
Bourges in case the Convention itself should 
be attacked and destroyed. This last proposal 
was highly characteristic of the Girondins, 
heroic as orators, but as members of a political 
party always timid of action. 

The Committee of Public Safety, already 
tuned to its higher duties and viewing the 
faction fight of the assembly with some slight 
degree of detachment, steered a middle and 
politic course. Barere proposed a compromise, 
which the Girondins weakly accepted. But 
its enemies continued strenuous action, formed 
a new insurrectional committee, and set 
Hebert's infamous sheet, the Pere Duchesne, 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE i8i 

howling for their blood. This newspaper de- 
serves a few lines. 

Hebert, a man of the middle class, after a 
stormy youth drifted into revolutionary jour- 
nalism. With much verve, and a true Vol- 
tairian spirit, he at first took up a moderate atti- 
tude, but being a time server soon discovered 
that his interest lay in another direction. 
From the middle of 1792 he rose rapidly to 
great popularity by his loud defence of extreme 
courses. The Pere Duchesne, copies of which 
are at this day among the greatest of biblio- 
graphical curiosities, was written for the peo- 
ple and in a jargon out-Heroding their own, a 
compound of oaths and obscenities. The Pere 
Duchesne was nearly always in a state of 
grande joie or of grande colere, and at the 
epoch we have reached his anger is being con- 
tinuously poured out, the filthiest stream of 
invective conceivable, against the Girondins. 

With Marat and Hebert fanning the flames, 
the insurrectional committee drew up a new 
list of 32 suspect deputies. The Committee of 
Public Safety, appealed to by the Girondins, 
ordered the arrest of Hebert. On the follow- 
ing day, the 25th of May, the Commune 
demanded his release. Isnard, one of the Gi- 



i82 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ronde, that day acting as president of the 
Convention, answered the deputation of the 
Commune with unbridled anger, and concluded 
by declaring that if Paris dared to lay one 
finger on a member of the Convention, the city 
would be destroyed. There was in this an un- 
fortunate echo of the Duke of Brunswick's 
manifesto. 

On the 26th Robespierre, at the Jacobin 
Club, gave his formal assent to the proposal 
that an insurrection should be organized 
against the Gironde. Two days later Hebert 
was released, and the Commune and the com- 
mittees of the sections began organizing the 
movement. As a first step Hanriot, a sottish 
but very determined battalion leader, was 
placed in supreme command of the national 
guard. 

The movement took place on the 31st of 
May. On that day the Convention was sub- 
jected to the organized pressure of a mob of 
about 30,000 men, the greater part national 
guards. The Convention was not invaded, 
however, nor was there any attempt, any de- 
sire, to suppress it as an institution. For the 
leaders fully realized that it was by maintain- 
ing the Convention as a figurehead that they 
could continue the fiction that the Government 



FALL OF THE GIRONDE 183 

of France was not local, or Parisian, but na- 
tional, or French. But while refraining from 
a direct attack on the Convention they sub- 
jected it to a pressure so strong and so long 
continued that they converted it, as they in- 
tended, into an organ of their will. 

For three days Hanriot and his men re- 
mained at the doors of the Convention, and for 
three days, with growing agitation, the mem- 
bers within wrestled with the problem thus in- 
sistently presented at the point of bayonets and 
at the mouth of cannon. Motions of all sorts, 
some logical, some contradictory, were pre- 
sented. Robespierre moved the arrest of 
twenty of his colleagues. The Committee of 
Public Safety, anxious to retain supreme 
power, tried for some middle course that might 
satisfy the mob. Barere proposed that, to re- 
lieve the Convention from its difficulty, the 
Girondins should pronounce their own ex- 
clusion from the assembly. The impetuous 
Isnard, one of the few attacked members 
present, accepted. This was on the 2d of 
June. 

On the basis of the self-exclusion of the 
Girondin deputies the Committee of Public 
Safety now believed it could regain control of 
the situation, thereby demonstrating that it 



i84 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

had formed an inadequate estimate of Han- 
riot. It decided to proclaim the suppression 
of the insurrectional committee, and it an- 
nounced this to Hanriot at the same time as 
the self-exclusion of the Girondins. But Han- 
riot, sitting his horse at the doors of the Con- 
vention, was resolute and tipsy, a man of 
the sword not to be moved by parliamentary 
eloquence. He declined to accept any compro- 
mise, and ordered his guns to be brought up 
and unlimbered. The Convention was imme- 
diately stampeded by this act of drunken 
courage. The members attempted to escape. 
But every avenue, every street was closed by 
Hanriot's national guard, and Marat, blandly 
triumphant, led the members back to the hall 
sacred to their deliberations. There, ashamed 
and exhausted, at eleven o'clock that night, the 
Convention mutilated itself, suspended twenty- 
two of its members, and ordered the arrest of 
twenty-nine others. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE REIGN OF TERROR 

FOR SIX weeks after the fall of the Gi- 
ronde, until the 13th of July, the course 
of events in France, both in Paris and in 
the provinces, reflected the bitterness of the 
two factions, conqueror and conquered. In a 
minor way, it also revealed the fundamental 
difference of attitude between the two wings 
of the successful party, between Danton, con- 
tent to push the Girondins out of the way of 
the national policy, and Robespierre, rankling 
to destroy those who offended his puritanical 
and exclusive doctrine. 

The Girondins had behind them a strong 
country backing ; they had always been the ad- 
vocates of the provinces against Paris; some 
of them had declared for federalism, for local 
republics, semi-independent states centring 
about Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux. Those 
who succeeded in escaping from Paris, made 
their way to where they might obtain sup- 
port, and found, here and there, arms open to 

185 



i86 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

receive them. Lyons had risen against the 
Government on the 29th of May, and had rid 
itself of the Jacobin committee headed by 
Chaher, that had so far held it under control. 
Marseilles followed the example of Lyons. 
Normandy, where a considerable group of the 
fugitive deputies sought refuge, began to make 
preparations for marching on the capital. 

This was serious enough. But two other 
dangers, each greater, threatened Paris. The 
military situation on the northern frontier was 
still no better, while the Vendeens were advanc- 
ing from success to success, were increasing 
the size, the confidence, the efficiency of their 
armies. In such a desperate situation Danton 
seemed the only possible saviour, and for a 
few weeks he had his way. New generals 
were appointed; Custine to the Netherlands, 
Beauharnais to the Rhine, Biron to the Ven- 
dee; and at the same time negotiations were 
opened with the powers. But fortune refused 
to smile on Danton. Ill success met him at 
every turn, and opened the way to power for 
Robespierre. On the loth of June the Ven- 
deens captured the town of Saumur on the 
Loire, giving them a good passage for carry- 
ing operations to the northern side of the 
river. A council of war decided that an ad- 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 187 

vance should be made into Brittany and Nor- 
mandy, both strongly disaffected to the Con- 
vention. In the latter province Brissot and 
Buzot were already actively forming troops for 
the projected march against Paris. But be- 
fore advancing to the north the Vendeen gen- 
erals decided that it was imperative they should 
capture the city of Nantes, which controls all 
the country about the mouth of the Loire. 
Preparations were made accordingly, and, as 
the Vendeens had no siege train, Cathelineau 
and Charette headed a desperate assault 
against the city on the 29th of June. Catheli- 
neau was killed. Nantes defended itself 
bravely. The Vendeens were thrown back, 
and, as many writers have thought, their fail- 
ure at that point and at that moment saved 
the Republic. 

Apart from this one success, everything had 
been going ill with Danton's measures, and 
the Robespierrists were making corresponding 
headway. On the loth of July the Committee 
of Public Safety was reconstituted, and Dan- 
ton was not re-elected. Couthon and St. Just 
joined it, and Robespierre himself went on 
two weeks later; among the other mem- 
bers Barere for the moment followed Robes- 
pierre, while Carnot accepted every internal 



i88 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

measure, concentrating all his energy on the ad- 
ministration of the war department. 

It was just at this instant, with the Ven- 
deens for the moment checked, that Normandy 
made its effort. On the 13th of July its army 
under the Baron de Wimpffen, a constitutional 
tnonarchist, was met by a Parisian army at 
Pacy, 30 miles from the capital. The Nor- 
mans met with defeat, a defeat they were never 
able to retrieve. 

On the same day a dramatic event was oc- 
curring at Paris, — the last despairing stroke 
of the Gironde against its detested opponents. 
From Caen, where Brissot and Buzot had 
been helping to organize Wimpffen's army, 
there had started for the capital a few days 
previously a young woman, Charlotte Corday. 
Full of enthusiasm, like Madame Roland, for 
the humanitarian ideals that blended so largely 
with the passions of the Revolution, she repre- 
sented in its noblest, most fervent form that 
French provincial liberalism that looked to the 
Girondins for leadership. Like them she de- 
tested the three great figures who had led the 
Parisian democracy through massacre to its 
triumph, — Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And 
of the three it was Marat who worked deepest 
on her imagination, Marat always baying for 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 189 

blood, always scenting fresh victims, always 
corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's 
ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it ap- 
peared that in this one individual all that was 
noble and beautiful in the Revolution was con- 
verted into all that was hideous and ignoble; 
and she slowly began to perceive that even a 
feeble woman like herself could remove that 
blot from France, if only she could find the 
courage. . . 

On the 13th of July, Charlotte Corday, ac- 
complished her twofold sacrifice. She gained 
admission to Marat's house and stabbed him 
in his bath; she meekly but courageously ac- 
cepted the consequences. After being nearly 
lynched by the mob, she was tried by the 
Revolutionary Tribunal, and sent to the guil- 
lotine. 

The Prussians captured Mainz on the 23rd 
of July, the Austrians Valenciennes on the 28th. 
These disasters enabled Robespierre and the 
Commune to impose their views as to the con- 
duct of the military afifairs of the Republic. 
Decrees were passed for purifying the army. 
The aristocrat generals, Beauharnais, Biron, 
Custine, were removed, and, eventually, were 
all sent to the scafifold. Sans-culottes, some 
honest, some capable, many dishonest, many in- 



190 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

capable, replaced them. Sans-culottism reigned 
supreme. Civic purity became the universal 
test; and on this shibboleth the Commune 
inaugurated a system of politics of which the 
Tammany organization in New York offers 
the most conspicuous example at the beginning 
of the 20th century. Hebert was the party 
boss; his nominees filled the offices; graft was 
placed on the order of the day. The ministry 
of war and its numerous contracts became the 
happy hunting ground of the Parisian politi- 
cian, — Hebert himself, on one occasion, work- 
ing off an edition of 600,000 copies of his Pere 
Duchesne through that ministry. And lastly 
one must add that the army of the interior, 
the army facing the Vendee fell into the hands 
of the politicians. An incapable drunkard, 
Rossignol, was placed in command instead of 
Biron who, after two victories over the Ven- 
deens, was dismissed, imprisoned and sent to 
the guillotine. 

It was perhaps necessary that a brave and 
dashing soldier of the old school like Biron 
should be removed from command, if the de- 
crees of the Convention for prosecuting the 
war against the Vendee were to be carried out. 
One of those decrees ordered that "the forests 
shall be razed, the crops cut down, the cattle 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 191 

seized. The Minister of War shall send com- 
bustible materials of all sorts to burn the 
woods, brush, and heath." That was the 
spirit now entering the Revolution, the fury 
of destruction, the dementia of suspicion, the 
reign of terror. 

The terrorists were of two sorts, the men of 
faction like Hebert, together with those who 
accepted terrorism reluctantly but daringly like 
Danton; with them terror was a political 
weapon. With Robespierre, however, and his 
Jacobin stalwarts, it was something more, a 
strangely compounded thing, a political 
weapon in a sense, but a weapon behind which 
stood a bigot, a fanatic, a temperament gov- 
erned by jealous fears and by the morbid re- 
vengefulness of the man of feeble physique. 
It was Robespierre who always stood for the 
worst side of terrorism, for all that was most 
insidious and deep seated in it; and after its 
failure and the reaction in the summer of 1794, 
it was his name that was deservedly asso- 
ciated with the reign of terror. 

Robespierre in the summer of 1793 was still 
logically maintaining his attitude; while Dan- 
ton fought the enemies of the Republic, he 
fought Danton's measures. He told the 
Jacobin Club that it was always the same pro- 



192 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

posal they had to face, new levies, new bat- 
talions, to feed the great butchery. The plan 
of the enemies of the people,— he did not yet 
dare declare that Danton was one of them, — 
was to destroy the republic by civil and foreign 
war. In a manuscript note found after his 
death, he says *'The interior danger comes 
from the bourgeois ; to conquer them one must 
rally the people. The Convention must use 
the people and must spread insurrection. 
. . ." In August, carrying his thought a 
step further, he appeals to the Jacobin Club 
against the traitors whom he sees in everyone 
whose opinion diverges a hair's breadth from 
his own. There are traitors, he declares, even 
on the Committee of Public Safety, and all 
traitors must go to the guillotine. 

At the moment this speech was delivered 
Admiral Lord Hood had just captured Toulon, 
while Marseilles was being attacked by Car- 
teaux at the head of an army acting for the 
Convention. Coburg, commanding the Aus- 
trian forces in the Netherlands, was gaining a 
series of minor successes, and his cavalry was 
not much more than four days' march from 
Paris. Provisions were being gathered into 
the city by requisition, that is, by armed col- 
umns operating in the neighbouring depart- 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 193 

ments. Confiscatory measures passed the 
Convention for raising a forced loan of 
1,000,000,000 francs, for converting ^^super- 
fluous" income to the use of the State, — a pol- 
icy of poor man against rich. 

Alongside of these measures terrorism was 
getting into full swing. The revolutionary 
tribunal had its staff quadrupled on the 5th 
of September; within a few days the sections 
were given increased police powers ; and Collot 
d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, the two 
strongest supporters of Hebert in the Conven- 
tion were elected to the Committee of Public 
Safety. On the 17th, was passed the famous 
Loi des suspects, the most drastic, if not the 
first, decree on that burning question. It pro- 
vided that all partisans of federalism and 
tyranny, all enemies of liberty, all ci-devant 
nobles not known for their attachment to the 
new institutions, must be arrested ; and further 
that the section committees must draw up lists 
of suspects residing within their districts. All 
this meant a repetition on a larger and better 
organized plan of the massacres of a year be- 
fore. As Danton had said in the debates on 
the Revolutionary Tribunal: "This tribunal 
will take the place of that supreme tribunal, the 
vengeance of the people; let us be terrible so 



194 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

as to dispense the people from being terrible." 
Judicial, organized terror was to replace pop- 
ular, chaotic terror. 

With terror now organized, the prisons 
filled, and the Revolutionary Tribunal send- 
ing victims to the guillotine daily, the internal 
struggle became one between two terrorist 
parties, of Hebert and of Robespierre, both 
committed to the policy of the day, but with 
certain differences. Hebert viewed the sys- 
tem as one affording personal safety, — the ex- 
ecutioner being safer than the victim, — and 
the best opportunity for graft. The man of 
means was singled out by his satellites for sus- 
picion and arrest, and was then informed that 
a judicious payment in the right quarter 
would secure release. Beyond that, Hebert 
probably cared little enough one way or the 
other; he was merely concerned in extracting 
all the material satisfaction he could out of 
life. With Robespierre the case was differ- 
ent; it was a struggle for a cause, for a creed, 
a creed of which he was the only infallible 
prophet. Poor, neat, respectable, unswerving 
but jealous, he commanded wide admiration 
as the type of the incorruptible democrat; 
stiffly and self-consciously he was reproducing 
the popular pose of Benjamin Franklin. Be- 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 195 

tween him and Hebert there could be no real 
union. He was willing, while Hebert re- 
mained strong in his hold on the public, to 
act alongside of him, but that was all. 

Under the pressure of the Commune and the 
Mountain, the Convention put the laws of ter- 
ror in force against the defeated Gironde on 
the 3rd of October. Forty-three deputies, in- 
cluding Philippe Egalite, were sent to the tri- 
bunal, and about one hundred others were 
outlawed or ordered under arrest. The Con- 
vention, having thus washed its hands before 
the public, now felt able to make a stand against 
the increasing encroachments of the Commune, 
and on the loth St. Just proposed that the 
Government should continue revolutionary till 
the peace, which meant that the Committee of 
Public Safety should govern and the constitu- 
tion remain suspended. 

The Committee showed as much vigour in 
dealing with the provinces as it showed feeble- 
ness in dealing with Paris. Through August 
and September, rebellious Lyons had been be- 
sieged; early in October it fell. The Com- 
mittee proposed a decree which the Convention 
accepted, — from June 1793 to July 1794 it 
accepted everything, — declaring that Lyons 
should be razed to the earth. Couthon was 



196 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

sent to carry out this draconian edict, but 
proved too mild. At the end of October Collot 
d'Herbois, Fouche and 3,000 Parisian sans- 
culottes were sent down, and for awhile all 
went well. Houses were demolished, and 
executions were got in hand with so much 
energy that cannon and grape shot had to be 
used to keep pace with the rapidity of the 
sentences. About three thousand persons in 
all probably perished. 

It was at this moment that in Paris the 
guillotine, working more slowly but more 
steadily than Fouche's cannon and grape, was 
claiming some of its most illustrious victims. 
From the 12th to the 15th of October, the 
Revolutionary Tribunal had to deal with the 
case of Marie Antoinette. The Queen, who 
had been treated with increased severity since 
the execution of the King, supported the at- 
tacks of the pitiless public prosecutor, Fou- 
quier-Tinville, with firmness and dignity. 
The accusations against her were of the same 
general character as those against Louis, and 
require no special comment. But an incident 
of the trial brought out some of the most nause- 
ous aspects of the Hebert regime. The Com- 
mune had introduced men of the lowest type af 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 197 

the Temple, had placed the Dauphin in the 
keeping of the infamous cobbler Simon, had 
attempted to manufacture filthy evidence 
against the Queen. Hebert went into the wit- 
ness box to sling mud at her in person, and it 
was at that moment only, with a look and a 
word of reply that no instinct could mistake, 
that she forced a murmur of indignation or 
sympathy from the public. Robespierre was 
dining when he heard of the incident, and in his 
anger with Hebert broke his plate over the 
table. 

The Queen went to the guillotine, driven in 
an open cart, on the i6th. A week later the 
Girondins went to trial, twenty-one deputies, 
among them Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne and 
Boyer Fonfrede. Their trial lasted five days, 
and among its auditors was Camille Des- 
moulins, — Desmoulins, whose pamphlets had 
helped place his unfortunate opponents where 
they stood, Desmoulins, whose heart, whose 
generosity was stirred, who already was re- 
volting against terrorism, who was suddenly 
overwhelmed with a wave of remorse when 
sentence of death was pronounced against the 
men of the Gironde. It was the first revolt of 
opinion against the reign of terror, the first 



198 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

perceptible movement of the conscience of 
France, and it was to send Desmoulins himself 
to the guillotine. 

The Girondins went to the scaffold on the 
31st of October. The Due d'Orleans on the 
6th of November; four days later Madame 
Roland, who met death perhaps a little pedan- 
tically but quite nobly; then, on the 12th, 
Bailly. Of the Girondins who had escaped 
from Paris several committed suicide, Roland 
on receiving news of his wife's death; others 
within the next few months, Condorcet, Petion, 
Buzot. 

In this same month of November 1793 was 
introduced the Revolutionary Calendar,, of 
which more will be said in the last chapter.^ 
The holy seventh day disappeared in favour 
of the anti-clerical tenth day, Decadi; Saints' 
days and Church festivals were wiped out. 
This new departure was a step forward in the 
religious question which, a few weeks later, 
brought about an acute crisis. 

Between October and December the climax 
and the turn were reached in the Vendean 
war. After heavy fighting in October Henri 
de La Roche jacquelein had invaded Brittany, 
defeating the Republicans at Chateau Gontier 

1 See Chap. XVII. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 199 

on the 25th. Rossignol now had under his 
orders the garrison of Mainz and two excel- 
lent subordinates in Kleber and Marceau, who 
succeeded, in spite of their commander, in 
wresting success at last. On the 13th of De- 
cember a tremendous struggle took place at 
Le Mans in which the Vendeens were beaten 
after a loss of about 15,000 men. Kleber 
gave them no respite but a few days later cut 
up the remnants at Savenay. Although fight- 
ing continued long afterwards this proved the 
end of the Vendean grand army. 

These victories were immediately followed 
by judicial repression. The conventionnel 
Carrier organized a Revolutionary Tribunal 
at Nantes, and committed worse horrors than 
Fouche had at Lyons. Finding a rate of 200 
executions a day insufficient he invented the 
noyade. River barges were taken, their bot- 
toms were hinged so as to open conveniently, 
and prisoners, tied in pairs, naked and regard- 
less of sex, were taken out in them, and re- 
leased into the water. At Nantes, like at 
Arras and several other points, the proceed- 
ings of the Revolutionary Tribunals and of 
the gangs who worked the prisons, were 
marked by gross immorality in dealing with 
the women prisoners. At Nantes, Carrier, 



200 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

most thorough and most infamous of the Ter- 
rorists, is said to have caused the death of 
15,000 persons in four months. 

The fury of the Revolution, which turned to 
frenzy and dementia at Nantes, blazed into a 
marvellous flame of patriotic energy on the 
frontiers. Nearly half a million men were en- 
rolled in the course of 1793. A new volunteer 
battalion was added to each battalion of the 
old army, the new unit being named a demi- 
brigade. Rankers were pushed up to high 
command, partly by political influence, partly 
for merit. Jourdan, an old soldier, a shop- 
keeper, became general of the army of the 
north, and on the 15th of October defeated 
Coburg at Wattignies. The brilliant Hoche, 
ex-corporal of the French guards, was placed 
at the head of the army of the Moselle. 
Pichegru, the son of a peasant, took over the 
army of the Rhine. Under these citizen 
generals new tactics replaced the old. Pipe- 
clay and method gave way to Sans-culottism 
and dash. The greatest of the generals of the 
Revolution said: "I had sooner see a soldier 
without his breeches than without his bayonet.'^ 
Rapidity, surprise, the charging column, the 
helter-skelter pursuit, were the innovations of 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 201 

the new French generals. They translated 
into terms of tactics and strategy, Danton's 
famous apostrophe, ''Audacity, more audacity, 
yet more audacity \'^ 



CHAPTER XIV 
THERMIDOR 

D ANTON had fallen fast in popularity 
and influence since the moment when, 
after the fall of the Gironde, he had 
appeared to dominate the situation. On the 
1 2th of October, weary, sick at heart, dis- 
gusted at the triumph of the Hebertists, he had 
left Paris and, apparently retiring from poli- 
tics, had gone back to his little country town of 
Arcis-sur-Aube. There a month later Robes- 
pierre sought him out, and invited him to 
joint action for pulling down Hebert. With 
Robespierre this meant no more than that Dan- 
ton could help him, not that he would ever help 
Danton, and doubtless the latter realized it; 
but the bold course always drew him, and he 
accepted. Danton returned to Paris on the 
2 1 St of November. 

Robespierre had been moved to this step by 
an alarming development of Hebertism. Anti- 
clericalism, hatred of the priest, — and among 
other things the priest stood behind the Ven- 

2Q2 



THERMIDOR 203 

deen, — Voltairianism, materialism, all these ele- 
ments had come to a head; and the clique who 
worked the Commune had determined that the 
triumph of the Revolution demanded the down- 
fall of Catholicism, which was, as it seemed, 
equivalent to religion. A wave of atheism 
swept through Paris. To be atheistic became 
the mark of a good citizen. Gobel, the arch- 
bishop, and many priests, accepted it, and re- 
nounced the Church. Then a further step was 
taken. On the loth of November the Cathe- 
dral of Notre Dame was dedicated to Reason, 
a handsome young woman from the opera per- 
sonifying the goddess. Two weeks later, just 
as Danton reached Paris, the Commune closed 
all the churches of the city for the purpose of 
dedicating them to the cult of Reason. 

Robespierre, like most of the men of the 
Revolution, was an enemy of the Church; but 
he was not an atheist. On the contrary he ac- 
cepted in a very literal, dogmatic and zealous 
way the doctrines of Rousseau, his prophet not 
only in politics but in religion. To Robes- 
pierre the Plebertist cult of Reason was as 
gross blasphemy as it was to the most ardent 
Catholic, and the Jacobin leader had nerved 
himself for a struggle to destroy that cult. 
That was why he had appealed to Danton, 



204 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

though he knew that if Danton joined him in 
the fight it would not be for conscience, for a 
reHgious motive, but solely to destroy Hebert 
and perhaps to regain control of the Commit- 
tee of Public Safety. This last possibility 
Robespierre risked. 

' The two allies immediately opened their 
campaign against Hebert. In the Convention 
Danton, with rather hollow rhetoric, declaimed 
in favour of popular festivals at which in- 
cense should be offered to the Supreme Being. 
Robespierre at the Jacobins, allowing his 
venom to master his logic, declared: ^'Athe- 
ism is aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme 
Being who guards injured innocence and 
who punishes triumphant crime is democratic. 
. . . If God did not exist we should have to 
invent Him." 

It was just at this moment, when Hebertism 
and terrorism appeared interchangeable terms, 
and when the two most powerful men of the 
assembly had simultaneously turned against 
Hebertism, that Desmoulins stepped forward 
as the champion of the cause of mercy, to pull 
down Hebert, and with Hebert the guillotine. 
Early in December he brought out a news- 
paper once more, Le Vieux Cordelier, and in 
that boldly attacked the gang of thieves and 



THERMIDOR 205 

murderers who were working the poHtics of 
the city of Paris. PubHc opinion awakened; 
voices were raised here and there; presently 
petitions began to flow in to the Convention. 
The tide was unloosened. How far would it 
go? 

Robespierre, crafty, cunning, shifty, at first 
cautiously used Desmoulins for his purposes. 
But when Danton himself, the arch-terrorist, 
bravely accepted the doctrine of clemency, 
Robespierre began to draw back. At the end 
of December the return of Collot d'Herbois 
from his massacres at Lyons stiffened Robes- 
pierre, and rallied the Committee of Public 
Safety more firmly to the policy of terror. For 
some weeks a desperate campaign of words was 
fought out inch by inch, Danton and Desmou- 
lins lashing out desperately as the net closed 
slowly in on them; and it was not till the 20th 
of February 1794 that they received the death 
stroke. It was dealt by St. Just. 

St. Just, a doctrinaire and puritan nearly as 
fanatical as his chief, possessed what Robes- 
pierre lacked, — decision, boldness, and a keen 
political sense. On his return from a mission 
to the armies he had found in Paris the situa- 
tion already described, and decided immedi- 
ately to strike hard, at once, and at all the 



2o6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

opponents of his party. The first measures 
were aimed at Hebert and the Commune, for 
St. Just judged that they were ripe for the 
guillotine. A decree was pushed through the 
Convention whereby it was ordered that the 
property of all individuals sent to the scaffold 
under the Loi des suspects should be distributed 
to the poor sans-culottes. This infamous en- 
actment was intended to cut from under the 
feet of the Commune any popular support it 
still retained. 

At St. Just's provocation the attacked party 
closed its ranks, — the Commune, the ministers, 
the Cordeliers, Hebert, Hanriot. Proclama- 
tions were issued for a new insurrection. But 
Paris was getting weary of insurrections, 
wearier still of the obvious blackguardism and 
peculation of the Hebertists, weariest of the 
perpetual drip of blood from the guillotine. 
No insurrection could be organized. For 
some days the opponents remained at arm's 
length. Finally on the 17th of March the 
Committee of Public Safety ordered the arrest 
of Hebert, Pache, Chaumette and a number 
of their prominent supporters, and was almost 
surprised to find that the arrest was carried 
out with virtually no opposition. Paris raised 
not a finger to defend them, and contentedly 



THERMIDOR 207 

watched them go to the guillotine a week later. 
It was otherwise with Danton. St. Just 
gave him no time. With the Committee and 
the Convention well in hand he struck at once, 
less than a week after Hebert had been de- 
spatched. He read a long accusation against 
Danton to the Convention, and that body 
weakly voted his arrest. Danton, Desmoulins, 
and some of their chief supporters were hur- 
ried to prison; and from prison to the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal. On the 2d, 3rd and 4th of 
April they were tried by the packed bench and 
packed jury of that expeditious institution. 
But so uncertain was the temper of the vast 
throng that filled the streets outside, so 
violently did Danton struggle to burst his 
bonds, that for a moment it seemed as though 
the immense reverberations of his voice, heard, 
it is said, even across the Seine, might awaken 
the force of the people, as so often before, and 
overthrow the Jacobin rule. A hasty message 
to the Committee of Public Safety, — a hasty 
decree rushed through the Convention, — and 
Danton's voice was quelled, judgment de- 
livered before the accused had finished his 
defence. On the next day Danton and Des- 
moulins went to the guillotine together, — Paris 
very hushed at the immensity and suddenness 



208 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the catastrophe. Desmoulins was gone, the 
leader of the revolt against the monarchy in 
1789, the generous defender of the cause of 
mercy in 1794; and Danton was gone, with all 
his sins, with all his venality, the most power- 
ful figure of the Revolution, more nearly the 
Revolution itself than any man of his time. 

Complete triumph! As Robespierre, St. 
Just and Couthon looked about them, the three 
apostles leading France down the narrow path 
of civic virtue, they saw nothing but prostrate 
enemies. The power of the Commune was 
gone, and in its stead the Committee of Public 
Safety virtually ruled Paris. Danton, the pos- 
sible dictator, the impure man ready to adjust 
compromises with the enemies of liberty, lax 
in conscience and in action, Danton too was 
down. The solid phalanx of the Jacobin Club, 
the remnant of the Commune, the Revolution- 
ary Tribunal, stood solidly arrayed behind 
Robespierre; and the Convention voted with 
perfect regularity and unanimity every decree 
it was asked for. 

But this attitude of the Convention only rep- 
resented the momentary paralysis of fear. No 
one would venture on debate, leave alone op- 
position. Men like Sieyes attended punctil- 
iously day after day, month after month, and 



THERMIDOR 209 

never opened their lips, — only their eyes, 
watching the corner of the Mountain, whence 
the reeking oracle was delivered. In the city 
it was the same. The cafes, so tumultuous 
and excited at the opening of the Revolution, 
are oppressively silent now. A crowd gathers 
in the evening to hear the gazette read, but 
in that crowd few dare to venture a word, an 
opinion ; occasional whispers are exchanged, the 
list of those sent to the guillotine is eagerly 
listened to, and then all disperse. 

And the prisons are full, — of aristocrats, of 
suspects, of wealthy bourgeois. Those who 
have money occasionally buy themselves out, 
and generally succeed in living well ; while out- 
side the prison doors, angry, half-demented 
women revile the aristocrats who betray the 
people and who, even in prison, eat delicate 
food and drink expensive wines. Among the 
prisoners there is some light-heartedness, much 
demoralization, with here and there, at rare 
intervals, a Madame Roland or an Andre 
Chenier, to keep high above degradation their 
minds and their characters. And every (lay 
comes the heartrending hour of the roll call 
for the Revolutionary Tribunal which with so 
many means death. 

The Tribunal itself, loses more and more 



2IO FRENCH REVOLUTION 

any sense of legality it had at the outset. Its 
procedure still carries a semblance of legal 
method, but it is really an automatic machine 
for affixing a legal label on political murders. 
And the Tribunal, as it progresses in its career, 
becomes more and more insane in its hatred 
of the party it seeks to destroy, of the anti- 
revolutionist, of the aristocrat. Is it not re- 
corded that it ordered the arrest of a little girl 
of 13, Mile, de Chabannes, suspect "because she 
had sucked the aristocratic milk of her 
mother.'' The Tribunal acquitted one person 
in every five; up to the fall of Danton it had 
sent about 1,000 persons to the guillotine; dur- 
ing the three months of Robespierre's domi- 
nation it was to send another 1,600, increasing 
its activity by hysterical progression. When 
Thermidor was reached, about thirty individ- 
uals was the daily toll of the executioner. 

Robespierre triumphant immediately re- 
vealed all his limitations ; he was not a success- 
ful statesman; he was only a successful 
religionist. His first care, therefore, was to 
attend to the dogma of the French people. He 
proposed that Decadi should be converted into 
a new Sabbath; he caused the dregs of the 
Hebertists, including Gobel, to be indicted for 



THERMIDOR 211 

atheism when their turn came for the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal. Robespierre sending a ren- 
egade Archbishop of Paris to the scaffold for 
atheism marks how very far the Revolu- 
tion had moved since the days of the States- 
General at Versailles. 

On the 7th of May, a month after Danton's 
death, Robespierre delivered a long speech be- 
fore the Convention, a speech that marks his 
apogee. It was a high-flown rhapsody on 
civic morality and purism. Voltaire and 
the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; 
Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The 
State should adopt his religious attitude, 
his universal church of nature. In that 
church, nature herself is the chief priest 
and there is no need of an infamous 
priesthood. Its ritual is virtue; its festivals 
the joy of a great people. Therefore let the 
Convention decree that the Cult of the Supreme 
Being be established, that the duty of every 
citizen is to practise virtue, to punish tyrants 
and traitors, to succour the unfortunate, to re- 
spect the weak, to defend the oppressed, to do 
good unto others. Let the Convention in- 
stitute competitions for hymns and songs to 
adorn the new cult; and let the Committee of 



212 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Public Safety, — that harassed and overbur- 
dened committee, — adjudicate, and reward the 
successful hymnologists. 

The Convention listened in silence, disgust, 
silent rebellion, — but bowed its head. The new 
cult appealed to very few. Here and there an 
intellectual Rousseauist accepted it, but the 
mass did what mankind in all countries and 
ages has done, refused to reason out what was 
a religious and therefore an emotional question. 
To the vast majority of Frenchmen there was 
only one choice, Catholicism or non-catholi- 
cism, and the cult of the Supreme Being was 
just as much non-catholicism as that of 
Reason. 

Robespierre, blind and satisfied, went on his 
way rejoicing. On the 8th of June, as Presi- 
dent of the Convention, he took the chief part 
in a solemn inauguration of the new religion. 
There were statues, processions, bonfires, 
speeches, and Robespierre, beflowered, radiant 
in a new purple coat, pontificating over all. 
But beneath the surface all was not well. The 
Convention had not been led through the 
solemn farce without protest. Words of in- 
sult were hissed by more than one deputy as 
Robespierre passed within earshot, and the 
Jacobin leader realized fully that behind the 



THERMIDOR 213 

docile votes and silent faces currents of rage 
and protest were stirring. For this, as for 
every ill, there was but one remedy, to sharpen 
the knife. 

Two days later, on the loth, new decrees 
were placed before the Convention for intensi- 
fying the operations of the Revolutionary 
Tribunal. New crimes were invented "spread- 
ing discouragement, perverting public opin- 
ion''; the prisoner's defence was practically 
taken away from him; and, most important, 
members of the Convention lost their invio- 
lability. The Convention voted the decree, but 
terror had now pushed it to the wall and self- 
defence automatically sprang up. From that 
moment the Convention nerved itself to the in- 
evitable struggle. Billaud, Collot and Barere, 
the impures of the Committee of Public Safety, 
looked despairingly on all sides of the Conven- 
tion for help to rid themselves of the monster, 
whose tentacles they already felt beginning to 
twine about them. 

Just at this critical moment a trivial incident 
arose that pierced Robespierre's armour in its 
weakest joint, and that crystallized the fear of 
the Convention into ridicule, — ridicule that 
proved the precursor of revolt. Catherine 
Theot, a female spiritualist, or medium, as we 



214 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

should call her at the present day, highly 
elated at the triumph of the Supreme Being 
over the unemotional Goddess of Reason, had 
made Robespierre the hero of her half-insane 
inspirations. She now announced to her cred- 
ulous devotees that she was the mother of God, 
and that Robespierre was her son. It be- 
came the sensation of the day. Profiting by 
the temporary absence of St. Just with the 
army in the Netherlands, the Committee of 
Public Safety decided that Catherine Theot was 
a nuisance and a public danger, and must be 
arrested. Robespierre, intensely susceptible to 
ridicule, not knowing what to do, pettishly 
withdrew from the Convention, confined him- 
self to his house and the Jacobin Club, and left 
the Committee to carry out its intention. Every 
member of the Convention realized that this 
was a distinct move against Robespierre. 

St. Just was with Jourdan's army in the 
north, and for the moment all eyes were fixed 
on that point. The campaign of 1794 might 
be decisive. France and Austria had put 
great armies in the field. The latter now con- 
trolled the belt of frontier fortresses, and if, 
pushing beyond these, she destroyed the 
French army, Paris and the Revolution might 
soon be at an end. As the campaign opened, 



THERMIDOR 215 

however, fortune took her place with the tri- 
colour flag. Minor successes fell to Moreau, 
Souham, Macdonald, Vandamme. In June 
the campaign culminated. The armies met 
south of Brussels at Fleurus on the 25th of 
that month. For fifteen hours the battle 
raged, Kleber with the French right wing 
holding his ground, the centre and left 
slowly driven back. But at the close of the 
day the French, not to be denied, came again. 
Jourdan, with St. Just by his side, drove his 
troops to a last effort, regained the lost ground, 
and more. The Austrians gave way, turned 
to flight, and one of the great victories of the 
epoch had been won. In a few hours the 
glorious news had reached Paris, and in Paris 
it was interpreted as an evil portent for Robes- 
pierre. 

For if there existed something that could 
possibly be described as a justification for ter- 
rorism, that something was national danger 
and national fear. Ever since the month of 
July 1789 there had been a perfect cor- 
respondence between military pressure on 
Paris and the consequent outbreak of violence. 
But this great victory, Fleurus, seemed to 
mark the complete triumph of the armies of the 
Republic; all danger had been swept away, so 



2i6 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

why should terror and the guillotine continue? 
As the captured Austrian standards were 
paraded in the Tuileries gardens and presented 
to the Convention on a lovely June afternoon, 
every inclination, every instinct was for rejoic- 
ing and good will. The thought that the cart 
was still steadily, lugubriously, wending its 
way to the insatiable guillotine, appeared un- 
bearable. 

From this moment the fever of conspiracy 
against Robespierre coursed rapidly through 
the Convention. Some, like Sieyes, were 
statesmen, and judged that the turn of the 
tide had come. Others, like Tallien or Joseph 
Chenier, were touched in their family, — a 
brother, a wife, a sister, awaiting judgment 
and the guillotine. Others feared; others 
hoped ; and yet others had vengeance to satisfy, 
especially the remnants of Danton's, of Bris- 
sot's and of Hebert's party. St. Just saw 
the danger of the situation and attempted to 
cow opposition. He spoke threateningly of the 
necessity for a dictatorship and for a long list 
of proscriptions. 

It was the most silent member of the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety, Carnot, who brought 
on the crisis. Affecting an exclusive concern 
for the conduct of the war and perfunctorily 



THERMIDOR 217 

signing all that related to internal affairs, he 
was secretly restive and anxious to escape from 
the horrible situation. Prompted by some of 
his colleagues, he ordered, on the 24th of July, 
that the Paris national guard artillery should 
go to the front. This was taking the decisive 
arm out of the hands of Hanriot, for Hanriot 
had made his peace with Robespierre, had sur- 
vived the fall of Hebert, and was still in com- 
mand of the national guard. 

There could be no mistaking the significance 
of Carnot's step. On the same night Couthon 
loudly denounced it at the Jacobins, and the 
club decided that it would petition the Con- 
vention to take action against Robespierre's 
enemies. Next day Barere replied. He read 
a long speech to the Convention in which, with- 
out venturing names, he blame.d citizens who 
were not heartened by the victories of the army 
and who meditated further proscriptions. On 
the 26th, the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre 
reappeared in the assembly, and ascended the 
tribune to reply to Barere. 

Robespierre felt that the tide was flowing 
against him; instinct, premonitions, warned 
him that perhaps his end was not far off. In 
this speech — it was to be his last before the 
Convention — the melancholy note prevailed. 



2i8 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

There was no effort to conciliate, no attempt 
at being politic, only a slightly disheartened 
tone backed by the iteration which France al- 
ready knew so well: — the remedy for the evil 
must be sought in purification ; the Convention, 
the Committee of Public Safety, must be 
purged. 

Under the accustomed spell the Convention 
listened to the end. The usual motions were 
put. Robespierre left the assembly. It was 
voted that his speech should be printed; and 
that it should be posted in all the communes of 
France. For a moment it looked as though 
the iron yoke were immovably fixed. Then 
Cambon went to the tribune, and ventured to 
discuss Robespierre's views. Billaud fol- 
lowed. And presently the Convention, hardly 
realizing what it had done, rescinded the 
second of its two votes. Robespierre's speech 
should be printed, but it should not be pla- 
carded on the walls. 

At the Jacobin Club the rescinded vote of the 
Convention conveyed a meaning not to be mis- 
taken. Robespierre repeated his Convention 
speech, which was greeted with acclamations. 
Billaud and Collot were received with hoots 
and groans, were driven out, and were erased 
from the list of members. Through the night 



THERMIDOR 219 

the Jacobins were beating up their supporters, 
threatening insurrection; and on their side the 
leaders of the revolt attempted to rally the 
members of the Convention to stand firmly by 
them. 

The next day was the 9th of Thermidor. 
St. Just made a bold attempt to control the 
situation. Early in the morning he met his 
colleagues of the Committee of Public Safe- 
ty and, making advances to them, prom- 
ised to lay before them a scheme that would 
reconcile all the divergent interests of the Con- 
vention. While the Committee awaited his 
arrival he proceeded to the body of the Con- 
vention, obtained the tribune, and began a 
speech. Realizing how far the temper of the 
assembly was against him, he boldly opened 
by denouncing the personal ambitions of 
Robespierre, and by advocating moderate 
courses — but he had not gone far when the 
members of the Committee, discovering the 
truth, returned to the Convention, and set to 
work with the help of the revolted members, to 
disconcert him. St. Just had perhaps only one 
weakness, but it was fatal to him on the 9th 
of Thermidor, for it was a weakness of voice. 
He was silenced by interruptions that con- 
stantly grew stormier. Billaud followed him 



220 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and made an impassioned attack on the Ja- 
cobins. Robespierre attempted to reply. But 
Collot d' Herbois was presiding, and Collot de- 
clined to give Robespierre the tribune. The 
din arose; shouts of "Down with the tyrant, 
down with the dictator/' were raised. Tallien 
demanded a decree of accusation. Members 
pressed around the Jacobin leader, who at this 
last extremity tried to force his way to the tri- 
bune. But the way was barred ; he could only 
clutch the railings, and, asking for death, look- 
ing in despair at the public galleries that had 
so long shouted their Jacobin approval to him, 
he kept crying: "La mort! la mortT' He had 
fallen. The whole Convention was roaring 
when Collot from the presidential chair an- 
nounced the vote whereby Robespierre, St. Just, 
Couthon, Hanriot, and several others, were or- 
dered under arrest. 

Hanriot at this crisis again displayed his 
qualities of action. While the members of the 
Convention were wasting time in talk and self- 
congratulation, he was getting his forces to- 
gether. He succeeded in freeing the accused 
deputies from their place of temporary arrest, 
and by the evening, all were gathered together 
at the Hotel de Ville. The Jacobins declared 
for Robespierre. The party made determined 



THERMIDOR 221 

efforts through the evening to raise insurrec- 
tion. But only small bodies of national guards 
could be kept together at the Hotel de Ville, 
and these began to dwindle away rapidly late 
in the evening when heavy rain fell. 

Meanwhile the Convention had met again 
in evening session. It appointed one of its 
own members, Barras, to command all the 
military forces that could be mustered, and then 
voted the escaped deputies outlaws for having 
broken arrest. The western districts of the 
city rallied to the Convention. Barras showed 
energy and courage. Information reached 
him of the state of affairs at the Hotel de Ville, 
and at one o'clock in the morning of the 29th 
he rallied several sectional battalions and 
marched quickly against the Robespierrists. 

At the Hotel de Ville there was little resist- 
ance. It was raining hard, and few remained 
with the Jacobin leaders. There was a short 
scuffle, in which Robespierre apparently at- 
tempted to kill himself and lodged a bullet m 
his jaw. The arrests were carried out, and a 
few hours later, no trial being necessary for 
outlaws, Robespierre, St. Just, Hanriot, Cou- 
thon and about twenty more, were driven 
through the streets to the guillotine. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONVENTION 

IT IS hard when considering the extraordi- 
nary features of the reign of terror, to 
reaHze that in some directions it was ac- 
comphshing a useful purpose. If the Revolu- 
tion had been maintained so long, in the face 
of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pres- 
sure, it was only by a policy of devouring 
flames and demented angels. And meanwhile, 
whatever might be the value or the fate of 
republican institutions, unconsciously the great 
social revolution had become an accom- 
plished fact. In the short space of five years, — 
but such years, — social equality, freedom of 
opportunity, a new national attitude, a new 
national life, had become ineradicable custom; 
the assemblies, in their calmer moments, had 
passed laws for educating and humanizing the 
French people, and every six months snatched 
from time and from Bourbon reaction for this 
purpose was worth some sort of price. When 
France rubbed her eyes after Thermidor, drew 

222 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 223 

breath, and began to consider her situation, 
she found herself a vastly different France from 
that of 1789. 

The whole course of the Revolution was like 
that of a rocket, rushing and whirring up- 
wards, hesitating a moment, then bursting and 
scattering its fragments in a downward course 
to earth. Thermidor was the bursting point 
of the Revolution, and after Thermidor we 
enter into a descending period, when the 
shattered fragments gradually lose their flame, 
when the great inspiration of the Revolution 
dies out, and only the less grand, less terrible, 
less noble, less horrifying things remain. The 
track of those shattered fragments must now 
be followed. 

The public interpreted the fall of Robes- 
pierre more accurately than did the Conven- 
tion, and saw in it the end of the reign of terror 
rather than the end of an individual dictator- 
ship. The nightmare was over ; men began to 
breathe, to talk. From day to day, almost 
from hour to hour, the tide rose; rejoicing 
quickly showed signs of turning into reaction. 
Within two weeks of the fall of Robespierre it 
became necessary for the men who had pulled 
him down to affirm solemnly that the revolu- 
tionary government still existed, and would 



224 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

continue to exist. This the Convention de- 
clared by a formal vote on the 12th of August. 

At the same time the Convention was return- 
ing to life, its members to self-assertion; and if 
its measures were chiefly directed to prevent- 
ing for the future any such preponderance as 
Robespierre had exercised, they also rapidly 
tended to get in line with the opinion now 
loudly proclaimed in all directions against 
terrorism. Within a few weeks the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety was increased in 
numbers and changed in personnel — among its 
new members, Cambeceres, Sieyes, Rewbell. 
Other committees took over enlarged powers. 
The Commune was suppressed, Paris being 
ruled by officials chosen by the Convention. 
But the sections were allowed to remain, for 
it was their support had given Barras victory 
on the 9th of Thermidor, and no one foresaw 
as yet that it was from the sections that the 
next serious danger would come. 

The national guards, by a series of meas- 
ures, were purged, and converted into an ex- 
clusively middle class organization. The 
Revolutionary Tribunal, after disposing of 
several large batches from the Robespierrists 
and the Commune, was reorganized though not 
suppressed. Its worst judges and officials 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 225 

were removed, its procedure was strictly 
legalized, and its activity was greatly moder- 
ated; it continued in existence, however, for 
about a year, and almost for lack of business 
came to an end in the spring of 1795. 

The terrorists, who had really led the revolt 
against Robespierre, by gradual stages sank 
back. At the end of August, Collot, Billaud 
and Barere went off the Committee of Public 
Safety. Two weeks later Carrier's conduct at 
Nantes incidentally came before the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal and a storm arose about him 
that finally destroyed any power the terrorists 
still retained. The press was seething with 
recovered freedom, and the horrors of Carrier 
gave the journalists a tremendous text. A 
long struggle was waged over him. In the 
Convention, Billaud and Collot, feeling that the 
attack on Carrier was in reality an attack 
against them and every other terrorist, tried 
hard to save him. It was not till December 
that the Convention finally decided to hand him 
over to justice and not till the i6th of that 
month that the Revolutionary Tribunal sent 
him to the guillotine. 

Among the striking changes brought about 
by the reaction after Thermidor was that it 
put two extreme parties in violent antagonism, 



226 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

with the Convention and reasonable pubHc 
opinion as a great neutral ground between 
them. One of these was the party of the de- 
feated Jacobins, raging at their downfall, con- 
vinced that without their guidance the Re- 
public must perish. The other was that of the 
MuscadinSj the scented and pampered golden 
youth, led by the conventionnel Freron, assert- 
ing loudly their detestation of sans-culottism 
and democratic raggedness, breaking heads 
with their sticks when opportunity offered. 
During the excitement of Carrier's trial the 
Muscadins made such violent demonstrations 
against the Jacobins that the Committee of 
Public Safety ordered the closing of the club. 
But neither the Committee nor the Muscadins 
could destroy the Jacobin himself. 

Fleurus had been followed by continued 
success. Jourdan and Pichegru drove the 
Austrians before them and overran the Low 
Countries to the Rhine. Then in October 
Pichegru opened a winter campaign, invaded 
Holland, and, pushing on through snow and 
ice, occupied Amsterdam in January and cap- 
tured the Dutch fleet, caught in the ice, with his 
cavalry under Moreau. At the same time 
Jourdan was operating further east, and, 
sweeping up the valley of the Rhine, cleared 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 227 

the Austrians from Koln and Coblenz. 
Further along the Rhine the Prussians now 
only held Mainz on the French side of that 
river. To the south the generals of the Re- 
public occupied all the passes of the Alps 
into Italy, and pushed triumphantly into 
Spain. With their hand full of these successes 
the Committee of Public Safety opened peace 
negotiations at the turn of the year. With 
peace established the Committee would be able 
to transmit its power to a regular constitutional 
government. 

As the year 1795 opened, the interior situa- 
tion began to get acutely troublesome once 
more. Although the Convention was pursuing 
a temperate course, relaxing the rigour of the 
revolutionary legislation on all sides, its con- 
cessions did not satisfy, but only encouraged, 
the reactionary party. Worse than this, how- 
ever, the winter turned out the worst since 
1788, for shortage of food. The Parisian mob, 
however much it had now lost of its insurrec- 
tional vigour, felt starvation no less keenly 
than before, and hunger made doubly danger- 
ous the continued strugglings of Jacobins and 
Muscadins for power. The Convention tried 
hard to steer a safe course between them. 

Towards the middle of February it was the 



228 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Jacobins who appeared the more dangerous. In 
their irritation and fear of the collapse of the 
Republic they organized revolt. At Toulon, 
at Marseilles, they seized control, and were 
suppressed not without difficulty. The Con- 
vention thereupon ordered that the conduct of 
Billaud, Barere and Collot should be investi- 
gated. A few days later it recalled the 
members of the Gironde who had succeeded in 
escaping from the operations of the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal, among them Louvet, Isnard, 
Lanjuinais. Alarmed at these steps, sup- 
ported by the clamours of the starving for 
bread, the Paris Jacobins rose against the Con- 
vention. On the 1st of April, — the 12th of 
Germinal, — the assembly was invaded, and for 
four hours was in the hands of a mob shout- 
ing for bread and the Constitution. Then the 
national guard rallied, and restored order, and 
the Convention immediately decreed that Bil- 
laud, Barere and Collot should be deported to 
the colony of Guiana, — Guiana, the mitigated 
guillotine for nearly a century the vogue in 
French politics, the guillotine seche. Barere's 
sinister saying: '^Only the dead never come 
back," was not justified in his case. He alone 
of the three succeeded in evading the decreed 
punishment and lived, always plausible and al- 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 229 

ways finding supporters, to the days of Louis 
Philippe, when he died obscurely. 

This was a great success for the moderates. 
But to observers of the Revolution from a dis- 
tance, from London, Berlin or Vienna, the 
event appeared under a slightly different light. 
Pichegru happened to be in Paris at the mo- 
ment, and Pichegru had been made military 
commander of the city. In reality he had little 
to do with suppressing the insurrection, but 
from a distance it appeared that the Republic 
had found in its democratic general, the con- 
queror of Holland, that solid support of force 
without which the establishment of law and 
order in France appeared impossible. 

A few days later the pacification began. 
At Basle Barthelemy had been negotiating 
for months past, and now, on the 5th of April, 
he signed a treaty with Hardenberg, the 
representative of Prussia. The government 
of King Frederick William was far too much 
interested in the third partition of Poland, then 
proceeding, far too little interested in the 
Rhineland, to maintain the war longer. It 
agreed to give the French Republic a free hand 
to the south of the Rhine in return for which 
it was to retain a free hand in northern Ger- 
many, an arrangement which was to underlie 



230 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

many important phases of Franco-Prussian re- 
lations from that day until 1871. 

The peace with Prussia was followed by 
one with Holland on the i6th of March, which 
placed the smaller state under conditions ap- 
proaching vassalage to France. But with 
England and Austria, closely allied, the war 
still continued, and that not only because 
Austria was as yet unwilling to face so great 
a territorial loss as that of the Netherlands, 
but also because the Committee of Public 
Safety was not yet anxious for a complete 
pacification. Already it was clear that the 
real force of the Republic lay in her armies, 
and the Convention did not desire the presence 
of those armies and their generals in Paris. 

In the capital the situation continued bad 
from winter to spring, from spring to summer. 
As late as May famine was severe, and people 
were frequently found in the streets dead of 
starvation. To meet the general dissatisfac- 
tion Cambaceres brought in a proposal for a 
new constitution. But nothing could allay the 
agitation, and in May the reactionary party, 
now frankly royalist, caused serious riots in 
the south. At Marseilles, Aix and other 
towns many Jacobins were killed, and so 
grave did the situation appear that on the 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 231 

loth the Committee of Public Safety was 
given enlarged powers, and throwing itself 
back, relaxed its severity against the Jacobins. 
Ten days later came a second famine riot, the 
insurrection of the ist of Prairial, a mob 
honey-combed with Jacobin and reactionary 
agitators invading the Convention as in 
Germinal, and clamouring for bread and a 
constitution. The disorder in the assembly 
was grave and long continued. One member 
was killed. But the Government succeeded in 
getting national guards to the scene ; and in the 
course of the next two days poured 20,000 
regular troops into the city. Order was easily 
restored. Several executions took place. 
And the Convention voted the creation of a 
permanent guard for its protection. 

Royalism had been raising its head fast 
since Thermidor. The blows of the Conven- 
tion even after the ist of Prairial, had been 
mostly aimed at Jacobinism. The royalists 
were looking to a new constitution as an op- 
portunity for a moderate monarchical form of 
government, with the little Dauphin as king, 
under the tutelage of a strong regency that 
would maintain the essential things of the 
Revolution. Their aspirations were far from 
unreasonable, far from impossible, until, on 



232 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the loth of June, death barred the way by re- 
moving the young Prince. The details of his 
detention at the Temple are perhaps the most 
repellent in the whole history of the Revolu- 
tion. Separated from his mother and his aunt, 
the Princess Elizabeth, who followed the Queen 
to the scaffold, he was deliberately ill used by 
Simon and those who followed him as custo- 
dians, so that after Thermidor he was found 
in an indescribable state of filth and ill health. 
His treatment after that date was improved, 
but his health was irretrievably broken, so that 
when, in the early part of 1795, the royalists 
and many moderates began to look towards the 
Temple for the solution of the constitutional 
question, the Committee of Public Safety be- 
gan to hope for the boy's death. This hope 
was in part translated into action. The 
Dauphin was not given such quarters, such 
food, or such medical attendance, as his con- 
dition required, and his death was wilfully 
hastened by the Government. How important 
a factor he really was appeared by the elation 
displayed by the republicans over the event, for 
Louis XVII was a possible king, while Louis 
XVIII, for the moment, was not. 

It was the Comte de Provence, brother of 
Louis XVI, who succeeded to the claim. He 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 233 

was one of the old Court ; he had learned noth- 
ing in exile; he was associated with the de- 
tested emigres, the men who had fought in 
Conde's battalions against the armies of the 
Republic. And as if all this were not enough 
to make public opinion hostile, he issued proc- 
lamations on the death of his nephew announc- 
ing his assumption of the title of King of 
France and his determination to restore the 
old order. Within a few days, a royalist ex- 
pedition, conveyed on English ships, landed at 
Quiberon on the Breton coast, and fanned to 
fresh flame the embers of revolt still smoulder- 
ing in Brittany and the Vendee. 

Hoche had been placed in charge of Western 
France some months before this, and by ju- 
dicious measures had fairly succeeded in 
pacifying the country. He met the new 
emergency with quick resource. Collecting a 
sufficient force, with great promptness he 
marched against the royalists, who had been 
joined by three or four thousand Breton peas- 
ants. He fought them back to Quiberon, 
cooped them up, stormed their position, gave 
no quarter, and drove a remnant of less than 
2,000 back to their ships. 

That was almost the end of the trouble in 
the west of France. There was still a little 



234 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

fighting in the Vendee, but after the capture 
and execution of Charette and Stofflet in the 
early part of 1796, Hoche was left master of 
the situation. 

While the royalists were being shot down at 
Quiberon the Convention was debating a new 
constitution for France, a constitution no 
longer theoretical, no longer a political weapon 
with which to destroy the monarchy, but prac- 
tical, constructive, framed by the light of vivid 
political experience, intended to maintain the 
Republic and to make of it an acceptable, work- 
ing machine. What was decided on was this. 
The franchise which the Legislative had ex- 
tended to the working classes after the loth of 
August, was to be withdrawn from them, and 
restricted once more to the middle class. 
There were to be two houses; the lower was 
to be known as the Corps legislatif, or Council 
of Five Hundred; the upper was to be chosen 
by the lower, was to number only two hundred 
and fifty, and was to be known as the Ancients. 
The lower house was to initiate legislation ; the 
upper one was to do little more than to exer- 
cise the suspensive veto which the Constitution 
of 1 79 1 had given to the King. Then there 
was to be an executive body, and that was 
merely the Committee of Public Safety modi- 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 235 

fied. There were to be five Directors elected 
for individual terms of five years, and holding 
general control over foreign affairs, the army 
and navy, high police and the ministries. The 
constitution further reaffirmed the declaration 
of the rights of man and guaranteed the sales 
of the national lands. 

This constitution had many good points, was 
not ill adapted to the needs and aspirations of 
France in the year 1795, and it was hailed 
with delight by the public. This at first 
seemed a good symptom. But the Convention 
soon, discovered that this delight was founded 
not so much on the excellence of the constitu- 
tion, as on the fact that putting it into force 
would enable France to get rid of the Conven- 
tion, of the men of the Revolution. This was 
a sobering thought. 

After some consideration of this difficult 
point, the Convention decided, about the end 
of August, on a drastic step. To prevent the 
country from excluding the men of the Conven- 
tion from the Council of Five Hundred, it en- 
acted that two-thirds of the members of the 
new body must be taken from the old; this 
was the famous decree of the two-thirds, or 
decree of Fructidor. Now there was some- 
thing to be said for this decree. It was, 



236 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of course, largely prompted by the selfish 
motive of men who, having power, wished to 
retain it. But it could be urged that since the 
fall of Robespierre the Convention had steered 
a difficult course with some ability and moder- 
ation, and had evolved a reasonable constitu- 
tion for France. Was it not therefore 
necessary to safeguard that constitution by 
preventing the electors from placing its execu- 
tion in the hands of a totally untried body of 
men? 

Whatever there might be to say in favour 
of the decrees of Fructidor, they provoked an 
explosion of disgust and disappointment on the 
part of the public. The sections of Paris pro- 
tested loudly, sent petitions to the Convention 
asking for the withdrawal of the decrees, and, 
getting no satisfaction, took up a threatening 
attitude. The Convention had weathered 
worse-looking storms, however; it held on its 
course and appointed the 12th of October for 
the elections. The sections, led by the section 
Lepeletier, thereupon organized resistance. 

On the 4th of October, 12th of Vendemiaire, 
the sections of Paris called out their national 
guard. The Convention replied by ordering 
General Menou, in command of the regular 
troops in the city, to restore order. Menou 



LAST DAYS OF CONVENTION 237 

had few troops, and was weak. He failed; 
and that night the Convention suspended him, 
and, as in Thermidor, gave Barras supreme 
command. Barras acted promptly. He called 
to his help every regular army officer in Paris 
at that moment, among others a young Cor- 
sican brigadier, Buonaparte by name, and as- 
signed troops and a post to each. He hastily 
despatched another young officer, Murat, with 
his hussars, to bring some field pieces into the 
city; and so passed the night. 

On the next day the crisis came to a head. 
The national guards, between 20,000 and 
30,000 strong, began their march on the Con- 
vention. They were firmly met at various 
points by the Government troops. General 
Buonaparte caught the insurgents in the rue St. 
Honore at just a nice range for his guns, 
promptly poured grape in, and completely dis- 
persed them. 

Once more the Convention had put down 
insurrection, and once more it showed modera- 
tion in its victory. It only allowed two ex- 
ecutions to take place, but held Paris down 
firmly with regular troops. Buonaparte, whom 
Barras already knew favourably, had made so 
strong an impression and had rendered such 
good service, that he was appointed second in 



238 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

command, and not long after got Barras' re- 
version and became general-in-chief of the 
army of the Interior. 

With this last vigorous stroke the Conven- 
tion closed its extraordinary career, — a career 
that began with the monarchy, passed through 
the reign of terror, and finished in the Direc- 
toire. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE DIRECTOIRE 

WITH the Directoire the Revolution 
enters its last phase, and with that 
phase all readers of history connect 
certain well-marked external characteristics, 
extravagance of dress, of manners, of living; 
venality and immorality unblushing and unre- 
strained. The period of the Directoire is that 
during which the political men of the Revolu- 
tion, with no principles left to guide them, 
gradually rot away ; while the men of the sword 
become more and more their support, and 
finally oust them from power. 

The Councils, apart from the ex-members 
of the Convention, were found to be far less 
royalist than had been expected. The farming 
class, which had had great influence in the 
elections, had gained much from the Revolu- 
tion; the farmers had got rid of the feudal 
burdens; they had acquired land; they had 
profited from free transit. Anxious to retain 
what they had won, they elected men of moder- 

239 



240 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ate views rather than reactionaries. The 
voice of these new members could not, how- 
ever, influence the choice of the Directors, who 
were all taken from the ex-conventionnels. 
They were Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Larevel- 
liere and Letourneur. Of these Letourneur 
and Carnot were ready to listen to the wishes 
of the electorate, and to join hands with the 
new party of moderates in a constructive policy. 
The other three however took their stand 
firmly on the maintenance of the settlement 
effected by the Convention, and on deriving all 
the personal advantage they could from power. 
Rewbell began to accumulate a vast fortune, 
and Barras to squander and luxuriate. 

The officials appointed by the Directors 
were as needy and rapacious as their chiefs. 
Everything could be had for money. Eng- 
land and the United States were offered 
treaties on the basis of first purchasing the 
good will of ministers for Foreign Affairs or 
Directors. In the gilded halls of the Luxem- 
bourg, Barras, surrounded by a raffish court, 
dispensed the honours and the spoils of the new 
regime. Women in astounding and wilfully 
indecent dresses gravitated about him and his 
entourage, women representing all the strata 
heaved upwards by the Revolution, with here 



THE DIRECTOIRE 241 

and there a surviving aristocrat, like the 
widow of Beauharnais, needy, and turning to 
the new sun to reHeve her distress. Among 
them morahty was at the lowest ebb. For the 
old sacrament of marriage had been virtually 
demolished by law; civil marriage and divorce 
had been introduced, and in the governing 
classes, so much affected in family life and 
fortune by the reign of terror, the step between 
civil marriage and what was no marriage at 
all soon appeared a distinction without much 
difference. There seemed only one practical 
rule for life, to find the means of subsistence, 
and to have as good a time as possible. 

The external situation which the new 
Government had to face required energ'etic 
measures. There had been great hopes after 
the victories of 1794, that the year 1795 would 
see the French armies pressing into the valley 
of the Danube and bringing the Austrian 
monarchy to terms. But the campaign of 1795 
went to pieces. The generals were nearly as 
venal as the politicians, and Pichegru was suc- 
cessfully tampered with. He failed to support 
Jourdan; he made false movements; and as a 
result the French armies at the close of the 
summer were no further than the Rhine. 



242 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Preparations were made by the Directoire 
to retrieve this comparative failure; the cam- 
paign of 1796 was to see a strong offensive 
against the Austrians to the north and to the 
south of the Alps. Jourdan and Moreau, the 
latter displacing Pichegru, were once more to 
attempt to penetrate towards Vienna by the 
valley of the Danube. At the same time a 
smaller army was to invade Italy and, from the 
valley of the Po, perhaps lend a helping hand 
to the armies in Germany. Buonaparte was 
selected for this last command. 

Buonaparte owed his new appointment to a 
combination of reasons. He had for some time 
past, knowing the ground, placed plans for 
the invasion of Italy before the Government. 
These plans gave promise of success, and Car- 
not was ready to give their author a chance of 
carrying them into execution. Alongside of 
this was the strong personal impression made 
by Buonaparte ; his capacity was unmistakable. 
And last of all came the element of romance, — 
he had fallen in love with Mme. de Beauhar- 
nais, protegee of Barras, — and Barras worked 
for the appointment. Early in March Na- 
poleone Buonaparte and Josephine de Beauhar- 
nais were married ; before the end of the month 



THE DIRECTOIRE 243 

the young general had reached his head- 
quarters at Nice. 

In the middle of April news reached Paris 
of a series of brilliant engagements in which 
the army of Italy had defeated the Austrians 
and Sardinians. But immediately afterwards 
the Directoire was faced by the unpleasant fact 
that their new general, disregarding his in- 
structions, had concluded an armistice with 
Sardinia. Already in less than a month, 
Bonaparte, as he now called himself, had shown 
that he was a great general, and moreover 
a politician who might become a danger to the 
Directoire itself. From that moment a veiled 
struggle began between the two, the Directoire 
attempting to reduce the power and influence 
of its general, Bonaparte constantly appealing 
from the Directoire to the public by rhetorical 
accounts of his victories and proceedings. 

While Bonaparte was invading Lombardy 
and attacking the great Austrian fortress of 
Mantua, the Directoire had to deal with con- 
spiracy in Paris. Conspiracy was a striking 
feature of the period that followed the fall of 
Robespierre; in fact, for the ten years that 
follow it may be said that all internal politics 
revolve about conspiracies. One of the most 



244 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

noteworthy was the one that came to a head 
in the spring of 1796, under the lead of 
Babeuf. 

Babeuf was a revolutionist of extreme views, 
but views rather social than political. His 
experience before the Revolution had been 
that of a surveyor and land agent, and in this 
business he had apparently gone below the sur- 
face and had thought over that great nexus of 
social, political, and economic questions that 
centre on that of the proprietorship of the soil. 
The Revolution turned him into a collectivist, 
and with the Directoire in power, and a middle 
class reaction in full swing, Babeuf began to 
be an influence. The Revolution had so far 
produced popular leaders, but not popular 
leaders who were of the people, and whose 
policy was for the people. Mirabeau and Dan- 
ton looked to the people, but only as oppor- 
tunist statesmen. Hebert had imitated the 
people, but for the sake of his own advance- 
ment. Robespierre, more honestly, had at- 
tempted to be the prophet of the people, but 
with him democracy was only the sickly residue 
of Rousseau's Contrat Social, and when it 
came to measures, to social legislation, he 
proved only a narrow bourgeois and lawyer. 
And so it had been all the way through; the 



THE DIRECTOIRE 245 

people, the great national battering-ram that 
Danton had guided, remained a mass without 
expression. The people had never had leaders 
of their own, had never had a policy save for 
their demand for a vote and for the blood of 
their oppressors. And now here was a man of 
the people who had a popular policy, who put 
his finger on the question that lay even deeper 
than that of privilege, that of proprietorship. 

Babeuf's doctrine was collectivist. Nature 
has given every man an equal right to enjoy 
her benefits; it is the business of society to 
maintain this equality; Nature imposes the ob- 
ligation of labour, but both labour and enjoy- 
ment must be in common; monopolizing bene- 
fits of land or industry is a crime ; there should 
be neither rich men nor poor ; nor should there 
be individual proprietorship of land, — the earth 
is no man's property. 

These doctrines were fervently accepted by 
a small group of devoted followers; they were 
widely acquiesced in by Jacobin malcontents 
seeking a convenient arm against the Govern- 
ment. Clubs were formed, the Cercle des 
Egaux, the Club du Pantheon; propaganda 
was carried on; conspiracy was evolved. 
Wholesale efforts were made to gain over 
the police and some troops. Finally the Di- 



246 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

rectoire got wind of the proceedings, and by 
prompt measures broke up the conspiracy and 
captured its leaders. Babeuf, arrested on the 
loth of May, was sentenced to death a year 
later by a special court, and executed. 

On the 19th of May the Directoire endorsed 
Bonaparte's action by signing a favourable 
peace with Sardinia ; then taking advantage of 
his further successes at Lonato and Castiglione, 
it half bullied, half bribed the feeble Govern- 
ment of Spain into a treaty of alliance offensive 
and defensive, the treaty of San Ildefonso, 
signed on the 19th of August. This placed a 
redoubtable naval force in line against Eng- 
land, with the immediate result that she with- 
drew her fleet from the Mediterranean where it 
had been considerably impeding the opera- 
tions of the French generals along the Italian 
seaboard. Before the close of the year the Di- 
rectoire pushed a step further, and Hoche made 
an attempt, frustrated by bad weather, to dis- 
embark in Ireland, which was ready to revolt 
against England. In February 1797, how- 
ever. Admiral Jervis crushed the Spanish fleet 
off Cape St. Vincent, restoring by this stroke 
England's commanding position at sea. 

In Germany matters had not gone well with 



THE DIRECTOIRE 247 

the Republic. The young Archduke Charles, 
massing cleverly against Jourdan, drove him 
back to the Rhine before Moreau could effect 
his junction. Moreau had nothing left but re- 
treat. This success enabled the Austrian 
Government to reinforce its troops in the Tyrol, 
whence its generals made repeated efforts to 
drive Bonaparte from the siege of Mantua. In 
September he won a considerable victory over 
the Austrians at Bassano; in November at Ar- 
eola; in January at Rivoli. Finally in Feb- 
ruary Mantua surrendered; Bonaparte in less 
than twelve months had disposed of five Aus- 
trian armies and captured the stronghold of 
the Hapsburgs in Italy. 

Preparations were now made for a new 
move. The Directoire withdrew Bernadotte 
with a strong division from Germany to 
strengthen Bonaparte, and raised his army to 
70,000 men. He advanced through Friuli and 
the Julian Alps, outflanking the Archduke 
Charles, who attempted to bar his way, with de- 
tached corps under Joubert and Massena. 
Bonaparte was irresistible. He forced his way 
to within a short distance of Vienna, and fi- 
nally at Leoben, on the i8th of April, Austria 
accepted peace preliminaries. She agreed to 



248 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

cede the Netherlands and Lombardy, in return 
for which she was to receive certain compen- 
sations. 

Bonaparte was now negotiator as well as 
general. For the Directoire was in great 
danger; it had come face to face with a situa- 
tion in which it required all the support its 
general could give, and in return conceded to 
him a corresponding increase of powers. In 
March and April the first election for the re- 
newal of the Councils was held, and out of 216 
outgoing ex-conventionnels who appealed to 
the electorate, 205 were defeated at the polls. 
A more unanimous pronouncement of public 
opinion was hardly possible. 

But the Directors were not capable of accept- 
ing the verdict of the country; power was 
theirs, and they were resolved it should remain 
theirs. In the Councils an extreme party led 
by Boissy d' Anglas, Pichegru and Camille 
Jordan, embarked on a policy of turning out 
the Directors and repealing all the revolution- 
ary legislation, especially that directed against 
the emigres and the Church. They formed the 
Club de Clichy. In the centre of the house 
opinions were more moderate, — moderate pro- 
gressive, and moderate Jacobin; in the latter 
party, Sieyes, Talleyrand, Benjamin Constant, 



THE DIRECTOIRE 249 

and as a social and literary influence, the 
daughter of Necker, Mme. de Stael. 

The first step in the struggle was marked by 
the election of Barthelemy, the negotiator of 
the treaty of Bale and a moderate, to the Di- 
rectoire instead of Letourneur, who retired by 
rotation. Long debates followed on the 
emigres and the priests, and their course led 
to an attack by the Councils, supported by Car- 
not and Barthelemy, on the Ministry. Some 
changes were made, and it was at this moment 
that Talleyrand secured the post of Minister 
of Foreign Affairs. 

The Five Hundred now became interested 
in some rather obscure negotiations that Bona- 
parte was conducting in Italy with a view to 
converting the peace preliminaries of Leoben 
into a definite treaty. No sooner had he dis- 
posed of Austria than he had treacherously 
turned on Venice and seized the city. He was 
now juggling with this and the other French 
acquisitions in Italy in rather dubious fashion, 
and the orators of the opposition fastened on 
this as a text. It was just at this moment that 
Barras turned to his old protege and asked for 
his help. Bonaparte's sword leapt from the 
scabbard instantly. He issued a proclamation 
to his army denouncing the factious opposition 



250 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the Clichiens; and he sent Augereau, his 
grenadier general, to Barras' assistance. The 
result was the revolution of Fructidor. 

Late on the 3rd of September, Barras, Rew- 
bell and Larevelliere, announced the discovery 
of a great royalist conspiracy. Barthelemy 
was arrested; Carnot just succeeded in escap- 
ing. Next morning Augereau with 2,000 men 
surrounded the assembly, arrested Pichegru 
and several leading members, and prevented the 
other members from meeting. Meanwhile 
small groups of supporters of Barras from the 
two Councils came together and proceeded to 
transact business. On the 5th, the 19th of 
Fructidor, decrees were passed by the usurping 
bodies; they provided for the deportation of 
Carnot, Barthelemy, Pichegru and others; 
they arbitrarily annulled a number of elections ; 
they ordered all returned emigres to leave 
France; they repealed a recent law in favour 
of liberty of worship, and they placed the press 
under strict Government control. On the next 
day two new Directors were chosen from the 
successful faction. Merlin de Douai and Fran- 
Qois de Neufchateau. 

The Fructidorians now controlled the situa- 
tion, led by Tallien, Chenier, Jourdan in the 
Councils. Many officials were removed and 



THE DIRECTOIRE 251 

replaced by their adherents. Priests were 
severely repressed, thousands being impris- 
oned. Military tribunals were formed to 
deal with emigres, and, in the course of the 
next two years, sent nearly 200 to the firing 
party. 

Six weeks after Fructidor, on the 17th of 
October, the long struggle between France and 
Austria was concluded by the treaty of Campo 
Formio, signed by Bonaparte and Cobenzl. 
Austria ceded the Netherlands to France; her 
Lombard province was incorporated in the 
newly formed Cisalpine Republic, which she 
recognised ; all the left bank of the Rhine from 
Bale was ceded to France; Austria took 
Venice; and a congress was to meet at Rastatt 
to consider territorial readjustments within the 
Empire. 

After Fructidor and Campo Formio matters 
proceeded more quietly for awhile, the close of 
the year being marked by only two incidents 
that need be recorded here, one the departure 
of Sieyes as ambassador to Berlin, the other 
the triumphant return of Bonaparte from Italy, 
and the ovations which the Parisian public 
gave him. But meanwhile, even with the 
Councils packed, the Directors were once more 
in difficulties, for the financial situation was 



252 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

getting worse and worse, and the venality, ex- 
travagance and incapacity of the Government 
seemed Hkely to result in a general bankruptcy. 
Already 145,000,000,000,000 of assignats had 
been issued. Gold was difficult to procure, a 
quotation for a louis in 1797 being three 
thousand and eighty francs in paper. A new 
form of assignat had been tried, but without 
much success. The expenses of the war were 
enormous, an army of over i ,000,000 men hav- 
ing doubled the annual expenses of the State. 
Had not Bonaparte systematically bled Italy 
of money and treasure the Directoire could not 
have conducted business so long. As it was, 
it could go on no longer. The new taxes, on 
property and income, had not become effective, 
largely because collection was devolved on the 
communes. And so, a few days after the rev- 
olution of Fructidor, a partial bankruptcy was 
declared ; interest payments were suspended on 
two-thirds of the debt. 

In the following spring, March- April 1798, 
the elections once more proved disastrous to 
the Directors. They really had few sup- 
porters beyond those who held office under 
them, or who hoped for their turn to come to 
hold office. Over 400 deputies were to be 
chosen, and opinion was still so hostile that 



THE DIRECTOIRE 253 

the only chance of the Directors was in illegal 
action. They tampered with the elections; 
and, finding this insufficient to accomplish their 
object, succeeded by another stroke of violence 
in getting a decree, on the 4th of May, 226. of 
Floreal, excluding a number of the newly 
elected deputies. All this proved in vain. 
The temper of the Councils was solidly hostile, 
and now the hostility came as much from the 
Jacobin as from any other part of the house. 
Partly from weakness, partly to create a 
diversion, the Directoire was now drifting into 
a new war. In February, owing to French 
intrigues, a riot took place at Rome, which re- 
sulted in a republic being proclaimed and the 
Pope being driven from the city. Further 
north the same process was repeated. French 
troops occupied Bern, and under their in- 
fluence an Helvetic republic came into exist- 
ence. Meanwhile, the war with England 
continued with increased vigour; a great 
stroke was aimed at England's colonial empire 
of the East, Bonaparte sailing from Toulon for 
Egypt on the 19th of May. On the 12th of 
June he seized Malta; on the 21st of July he 
routed the Mamelukes in the battle of the 
Pyramids; and on the ist of August his fleet 
was destroyed at its anchorage, near the mouth 



254 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the Nile, by Admiral Nelson. The best 
army and the best general of the Directoire 
were cut ofi in Egypt. 

Meanwhile Nelson, returning to Italy to 
refit his ships, decided the court of Naples to 
join in the war against France, and determined 
the march of Ferdinand and his army against 
Rome, which city he occupied on the 29th of 
November. Championnet, commander of the 
French forces in southern Italy, brought one 
more flash of triumph to his country's arms; 
though heavily outnumbered, he drove Ferdi- 
nand out of Rome, followed him to Naples, and 
took the city by storm after desperate street 
fighting at the end of December. 

At Naples, as elsewhere, France set up a 
vassal state, the Parthenopean Republic, that 
lived but few weeks and ended in tragedy. 
For early in the year 1799, Austria and 
Russia placed an army in the field in northern 
Italy, the war with Austria beginning in 
March. Its first events took place in Ger- 
many, where Jourdan, for the fourth time at- 
tempting to force his way through the valley 
of the Danube, once more met with failure. 
The Archduke Charles fought him at Stockach, 
and there defeated him. This defeat gave the 
northern command to Massena and sent Jour- 



THE DIRECTOIRE 255 

dan back to politics. When, some years later, 
the victor of Fleurus was again entrusted 
with the command of large armies, it was only 
to lead them to failure at Talavera, and to dis- 
aster at Vittoria. 

Just as the war with Austria broke out again, 
the yearly elections for the Councils were be- 
ing held. The war brought about a recur- 
rence of revolutionary fever, which resulted in 
great Jacobin successes at the polls. But the 
new deputies, like the old, were hostile to the 
discredited Directoire. France wanted some 
stronger, abler, more honest, more dignified ex- 
ecutive than she had ; she would no longer toler- 
ate that a gang of shady politicians should 
fatten in an office they did nothing to make ef- 
fective. And as the war cloud grew blacker 
and the national finances more exhausted, the 
Jacobins themselves undertook to reform the 
Republic. The first step was to get a strong 
foothold in the enemy's camp. This was ef- 
fected by electing Sieyes to fill the vacancy 
caused by the retirement of Rewbell from the 
Directoire, — Sieyes, who was known for his 
hostility to the existing system, whose reputa- 
tion for solidity and political integrity was wide, 
whose capacity as a constitutionalist and re- 
former was extraordinarily overrated. 



256 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

With Sieyes on the Directoire there comes 
into existence an ill-defined, vague conspiracy, 
all the more dangerous in that it was far more 
a general push of a great number of men to- 
wards a new set of conditions, than a cut-and- 
dried plot involving precise action and precise 
results at a given moment.. In this new set 
of conditions Sieyes, and those who thought 
with him, recognised one fact as inevitable, the 
fact Robespierre had so early foreseen and so 
constantly dreaded. The influence of the army 
must be brought in; and the influence of the 
army meant the influence of one of the gen- 
erals. And as Sieyes and his friends looked 
about for a general to suit their purpose, they 
found it difficult to pick their man. Bonaparte 
had long been cut off in Egypt by the English 
fleet, and news of his army only reached Paris 
after long delays and at long intervals. Jour- 
dan had. almost lost his prestige by his con- 
tinued ill success, and was in any case indis- 
posed to act with Sieyes. In Italy all the 
generals were doing badly. 

The Russian field marshal Suvaroff, with 
an Austro-Russian army, was sweeping every- 
thing before him. On the 27th of April he de- 
feated Moreau at Cassano; he then occupied 
Milan, and drove the French south into Genoa. 



THE DIRECTOIRE 257 

At this moment Macdonald, who had succeeded 
Championnet at Naples, was marching north- 
wards to join Moreau. Suvaroff got between 
them and, after three days' hard fighting, from 
the 17th to the 19th of June, inflicted a second 
severe defeat on the French, at La Trebbia. 
These reverses shattered the whole French 
domination of Italy; their armies were de- 
feated, their vassal republics sank, that of 
Naples under horrible conditions of royalist 
reprisal and massacre. 

The Directoire suffered heavily in prestige 
by the events of a war which it had so 
lightly provoked and was so incompetent to 
conduct. In June the Councils made a further 
successful attack on the Executive and suc- 
ceeded, in quick succession, in forcing out three 
of the Directors, Treilhard, Larevelliere, and 
Merlin. For them were substituted Gohier, 
who was colourless; Moulin, who was stupid, 
and Ducos, who was pliable. Of the Thermido- 
rians Barras alone remained, and Barras, after 
five years of uninterrupted power and luxury, 
was used up as a man of action; he was quite 
ready to come to reasonable terms with Sieyes, 
or, if matters should turn that way, with the 
Comte de Provence, whose agents were in 
touch with him. 



258 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Sieyes who owed his position in great part 
to the support of the Jacobins in the Council 
of Five Hundred, now found them an obstacle. 
The defeats of the armies were making them 
unruly. They had formed a club, meeting in 
the Manege, that threatened to develop all the 
characteristics of the old Jacobin Club, and 
that caused widespread alarm. The Ancients 
ordered the closing of the Manege. But the 
Jacobins, led by Jourdan, Bernadotte, minister 
of war, and others, continued their meetings 
in new quarters. They began to clamour for 
a new committee of public safety. 

Sieyes now selected Joubert to retrieve the 
situation. This young general had been one 
of Bonaparte's most brilliant divisional com- 
manders. He had a strong following in the 
army, was a staunch republican, and was pos- 
sibly a general of the first order. He was sent 
for, was told to assume command in Italy, and 
was given every battalion that could possibly 
be scraped together. With these he was to 
win a battle decisive not only of the fate of 
Italy but of that of the Republic and of the 
Directoire. 

Joubert left Paris on the i6th of July. A 
month later, having concentrated all that was 
left of the Italian armies together with his 



THE DIRECTOIRE 259 

reinforcements at Genoa, he marched north. 
At Novi, half way to the Po, Suvaroff barred 
his advance. A great battle was fought; the 
French were heavily defeated ; and Joubert was 
killed. One week later, just as the disastrous 
news of Novi was reaching Paris, General 
Bonaparte with a few officers of his staff em- 
barked at Alexandria, and risking the English 
men of war, set sail for France. 

Bonaparte now becomes the central figure 
on the historical stage, and the events that fol- 
low belong to his history more than to that 
of the Revolution. Here all that remains to 
be done is to indicate the nature of the change 
that now took place, his connection with the 
schemes of Sieyes for ridding France of the 
Directoire and placing something more effec- 
tive in its stead. 

While Bonaparte was sailing the Mediter- 
ranean, — seven long weeks from Alexandria 
to Frejus, — the disgust and weariness of 
France increased. Jourdan and Bernadotte, 
in a blundering way, attempted to wrest power 
from the Directors, but proved unequal in 
prestige and ability to the task; — a more 
powerful and more subtle political craftsman 
was. needed. Then in the gloom of the public 



26o FRENCH REVOLUTION 

despondence three sudden flashes electrified |j 
the air, flash on flash. Massena, with the last 
army of the Republic, turning sharply right 
and left, beat the Austrians, destroyed Suva- i{ 
roff in the mountains of Switzerland about 
Zurich. Before the excitement had subsided, 
came a despatch from the depths of the 
Mediterranean, penned with Ossianic exag- 
geration by the greatest of political roman- 
ticists, in which was announced the destruc- 
tion of a turbaned army of Turks at Aboukir 
by the irresistible demi-brigades of the old 
army of Italy. And then, suddenly, people ran 
out into the streets to be told that the man him- 
self was in France; Bonaparte had landed at 
Frejus. 

Rarely has a country turned to an individ- 
ual as France turned to Bonaparte at that 
moment. And he, playing with cool mastery 
and well-contained judgment on the political 
instrument fate had placed in his hands, an- 
nounced himself as the man of peace, of re- 
form, of strong civil government, of republican 
virtue. It was one long ovation from Frejus 
to Paris. 

At Paris Bonaparte judged, and judged 
rightly, that the pear, as he crudely put it, was 
ripe. All parties came to him, and Sieyes came 



THE DIRECTOIRE 261 

to him. The author of that epoch-making 
pamphlet Qu 'estce que le Tiers Etatf, and the 
greatest soldier produced by the Revolution, 
put their heads together to bring the Revolu- 
tion to an end. 

Sieyes and Bonaparte effected their purpose 
on the 9th and loth of November, the i8th and 
19th of Brumaire. The method they adopted 
was merely a slight development of that used 
by Barras and Augereau at the Revolution of 
Fructidor two years earlier. Some of the Di- 
rectors were put under constraint; others 
supported the conspiracy. But the Council of 
Five Hundred resisted strenuously, and it was 
only after scenes of great violence that it suc- 
cumbed. It was only at the tap of the army 
drums and at the flash of serried bayonets, that 
the last assembly of the Revolution abandoned 
its post. The man of the sword, so long fore- 
seen and dreaded by Robespierre, had come 
into his own, and the Republic had made way 
for the Consulate. 



CHAPTER XVII 

ART AND LITERATURE 

FRENCH literature has great names be- 
fore 1789, and after 1815. Voltaire, 
Diderot, Rousseau, to mention only the 
giants, wrote before the Revolution; and, 
Chateaubriand, Thiers, Hugo, Musset, Beran- 
ger, Courrier, after Napoleon had fallen. In 
between there is little or nothing. The period 
is like a desolate site devastated by flame, 
stained with blood, with only here and there 
a timid flower lending a little colour, a touch 
of grace, a gleam of beauty, to a scene of de- 
struction and violence. 

* No verse or prose of the period gives the 
note of the Revolution on its idealistic side 
more strikingly than Fabre d' Eglantine's no- 
menclature of the months for the Revolution- 
ary Calendar. Although slightly tinged with 
pedantism and preciosity, its freshness, its 
grace, its inspiration and sincerity, give it a 
flavour almost of primitive art. It remains 
one of the few notable prose poems of French 

literature. 

262 



ART AND LITERATURE 263 

Vendemiaire, 

premier mols de Tannee republicaine et de I'au- 
tomne ; 

prend son etymologic des vendanges 

qui ont lieu pendant ce mois. 
Brumaire, 

deuxieme mois de Tannee republicaine ; 

il tire son nom des brouillards et des brumes 
basses 

qui font en quclque sorte la transsudation de la 
nature pendant ce mois. 
Frimaire, 

troisieme mois de I'annee republicaine, 

ainsi nomme du froid tantot sec, tantot humide, 

qui se fait sentit pendant ce mois. 

NiVOSE, 

quatrieme mois de I'annee republicaine, et le 

premier de I'hiver; 
il prend son etymologic de la neige 
qui blanchit la terre pendant ce mois. 
Pluviose, 

cinquieme mois de Tannee republicaine ; 

il tire son nom des pluies 

qui tombent generalement avec plus d'abondance 

pendant ce mois. 
Ventose, 

sixieme mois de I'annee republicaine, 

ainsi nomme des giboulees qui ont lieu, et du vent 

qui vient secher la terre pendant ce mois. 



264 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Germinal, 

septieme mois de I'annee republicaine, et le 

premier du printemps; 
il prend son etymologic 

de la fermentation et du developpement de la 
seve pendant ce mois. 

Floreal, 

huitieme mois de Tannee republicaine, 
ainsi nomme de I'epanouissement des fleurs 
que la terre produit pendant ce mois. 

Prairial, 

neuvieme mois de Tannee republicaine; 

il tire son nom de la fecondite riante 

et de la recolte des prairies pendant ce mois. 

Messidor, 

dixieme mois de I'annee republicaine, et le pre- 
mier de I'ete ; 

il prend son etymologic de I'aspect des epis on- 
doyans et des moissons dorees 

qui couvrent les champs pendant ce mois. 
Thermidor, 

onzieme mois de I'annee republicaine, 

ainsi nomme de la chaleur tout-a-la-fois solaire 
et terrestre 

qui embrase I'air pendant ce mois. 
Fructidor, 

douzieme mois de I'annee republicaine ; 

il tire son nom des fruits 

que le soleil dore et murit pendant ce mois.^ 

1 TO THE NUMBER OF THE DAY IN I 

Vendemiare, add 21 to get dates in September, October; 



ART AND LITERATURE 265 

Fabre d' Eglantine was not the only member 
of the assemblies of the Revolution to deserve 
a place in literature. The great orators, 
Mirabeau, Danton, Vergniaud, Robespierre, 
and others, rose to a high pitch of rhetoric 
in their speeches. Famous apostrophes which 
they uttered are still current phrases: Nous 
sommes ici par le volonte du peuple, et nous 
n' ont sortirout que par le force des bayonettes. 
—Silence aux trente voix! — De 1' audace, en- 
core de r audace, et toujours de V audace! 
Some extracts from the orators have been 
given in preceding chapters, and the pamphle- 
teers have also been drawn from; the latter, 
even in the pages of Desmoulins, Loustallot 
or Mallet, rarely attain the level of the best 
literature. 

Brumaire, add 21 to get dates in October, November; 
Frimaire, add 20 to get dates in November, December; 
Nivose, add 20 to get dates in December, January; 
Pluviose, add 19 to get dates in January, February; 
Ventose, add 18 to get dates in February, March; 
Germinal, add 20 to get dates in March, April; 
Floreal, add 19 to get dates in April, May; 
Prairial, add 19 to get dates in May, June; 
Messidor, add 18 to get dates in June, July; 
Thermidor, add 18 to get dates in July, August; 
Fructidor, add 17 to get dates in August, September; 
Fructidor was followed by five jours supplementaires, the 
sans cullo tides. 



266 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The following passage from Desmoulins 
shows the unfortunate journalist at his best, 
when, backed by Danton, in December 1793, he I 
raised the standard of mercy against terror- 1 
ism and the infamous sans-culottism of Hebert. 

O mes chers concitoyens! Serions nous done ar- 
rives a ce point que de nous prosterner devant de 
telles divinites? Non, la Liberie, cette Liberie de- 
scendue du ciel, ce n'est point une nymphe de I'Qpera, 
ce n'est point un bonnet rouge, une chemise sale, ou des 
haillons. La Liberie, c'est le bonheur, c'est la raison, 
c'est I'egalite, c'est la justice. . . . Voulez vous 
que je la reconnaisse, que je tombe a ses pieds, que 
je verse tout mon sang pour elle? ouvrez les 
prisons. . . , 

Few poets marked the epoch, and of their 
works the most famous are battle songs. 
Rouget de Lisle, on the declaration of war 
against Austria in April 1792, composed the 
music and words of the best known song in 
the world, the famous Marseillaise. One of 
its strophes follows: 

Amour sacre de la patrie, 
Conduis, soutiens, nos bras vengeurs. 
Liberie, liberie cherie. 
Combats avec les defenseurs. 



ART AND LITERATURE 267 

Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire 

Accoure a tes males accens, 

Que tes enemis expirans 

Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire. 
Aux armes, citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons ! 
Marchez; qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. 

A better song poem than the Marseillaise, 
though not quite so famous, was written by 
Joseph Chenier, the Chant du depart; it was a 
great favourite with Bonaparte. 

La victoire, en chantant, nous ouvre la barriere. 

La liberte guide nos pas, 
Et du nord au midi, la trompette guerriere 
A Sonne Theure des combats ; 
Tremblez enemis de la France, 
Rois ivres de sang et d'orgueil, 
Le peuple souverain s'avance; 
Tyrans, descendez au cercueil ! 
La Republique nous appelle, 
Sachons vaincre ou sachons perir, 
Un Frangais doit vivre pour elle. 
Pour elle, un Frangais doit mourir! 

With the Cheniers we come to the one con- 
siderable poet of the revolutionary period, 
Andre, brother of the author of the Chant du 
depart. He was sent to the guillotine on the 



268 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

7th of Thermidor at the age of 31, havingi 
published only two poems, one on the Oath 
of the tennis court in 1789, and the other on 
the festival organized for the Swiss of Cha- 
teauvieux' mutinous regiment by Collot d' Her- 
bois in the spring of 1792. The opening lines 
of his first poem strike the note of a new era: 

Reprends ta robe d'or, ceins ton riche bandeau, 

Jeune et divine poesie, 
Quoique ces temps d'orage eclipsent ton flambeau. 

La liberie du genie et de Fart 
T'ouvre tous les tresors. Ta grace auguste et fiere 

De nature et d'eternite 
Fleurit. Tes pas sont grands. Ton front ceint de 
lumiere 

Touche les cieux. . . . 

And foreseeing, as a poet should, the trage- 
dies to come, he pleads for guidance to avert 
the resulting woes from the people : 

Ah, ne le laissez pas, dans la sanglante rage 

P' un ressentiment inhumain, 

Souiller sa cause et votre ouvrage. 
Ah! ne le laissez pas sans conseil et sans frein, 
Armant, pour soutenir ses droits si legitimes, 
La torche incendiaire et le fer assassin, 

Venger la raison par des crimes. 



ART AND LITERATURE 269 

^ Always among the moderates, Chenier was 
revolted by the apotheosis accorded by CoUot 
and the democratic party to the Swiss of the 
regiment of Chateauvieux. On the 15th of 
April 1792 he published some stinging verses 
on the subject, that possibly cost him his life. 

Salutj divin triomphe! entre dans nos murailles; 

Rend nous ces guerriers illustres 
Par. le sang de Desille et par les funerailles 

De tant de Frangais massacres. . . . 
Un seul jour pent atteindre a tant de renommee, 

Et ce beau jour luira bientot: 
C'est quand tu conduiras Jourdan a notre armee, 

Et Lafayette a I'echafaud. . . . 
Invoque en leur galere, ornement des etoiles, 

Les Suisses de Collot d'Herbois. . . . 
Ces heros que jadis sur les bancs des galeres 

Assit un arret outrageant, 
Et qui n'ont egorge que tres peu de nos freres 

Et vole que tres peu d'argent! 

Among the verses published after Chenier's 
death the most striking are those that have 
to deal with the period of the reign of terror ; 
of these a few lines will be quoted. The poet 
raised his voice while all Paris howled against 
Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat: 



270 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Non, non, je ne veux point honor er en silence, 
Toi qui crus par ta mort resusciter la France 
Et devouas tes jours a punir des forfaits. 
Le glaive arma ton bras, fille grande et sublime, 
Pour faire honte aux dieux, pour reparer leur crime, 
Quand d'un homme a ce monstre ils donnerent les 
traits. 



Mais la France a la hache abandonne ta tete, 
C'est au monstre egorge qu'on prepare une fete. 
Parmi ses compagnons, tous dignes de son sort, 
Oh! quel noble dedain fit sourire ta bouche, 
Quand un brigand, vengeur de ce brigand farouche, 
Crut te faire palir aux menaces de mort! 

C'est lui qui dut palir, et tes juges sinistres, 
Et notre affreux senat, et ses affreux ministres, 
Quand, a leur tribunal, sans crainte et sans appui, 
Ta douceur, ton langage et simple et magnanime 
Leur apprit qu'en effet, tout puissant qu'est le crime, 
Qui renonce a la vie est plus puissant que lui. 

Carrier and the atrocities, at Nantes gave 
him an even stronger text: 

Vingt barques, faux tissus de planches fugitives, 

S'entrouvrant au miheu des eaux, 
Ont elles, par milliers, dans les gouffres de Loire 

Vomi des Frangais enchaines, 
Au proconsul Carrier, implacable apres boire. 



ART AND LITERATURE 271 

Pour son passetemps amenes? 
Et ces porte-plumets, ces commis de carnage, 

Ces noirs accusateurs Fouquiers, 
Ces Dumas, ces jures, horrible areopage 

De voleurs et de meurtriers, 
Les ai-je poursuivis jusqu'en leurs bacchanales, 

Lorsque, les yeux encore ardents, 
Attables, le bordeaux de chaleurs brutales 

Allumant leurs fronts impudents, 
Ivres et begayant la crapule et les crimes, 

lis rappellent avec des ris, 
'Leurs meurtres d'aujourd'hui, leurs futures victimes, 

Et parmi les chansons, les cris, 
Trouvent dega, dela, sous leur main, sous leur bouche, 

De femmes un venal essaim, 
Depouilles du vaincu, transfuges de sa couche, 

Pour la couche de I'assassin? 

The writer of such lines could not hope to 
escape the proscriptions of the Terror; and it 
was in prison, awaiting his turn for the guil- 
lotine, that his last fragments were written. 
There a young girl, a fellow prisoner, became 
the heroine of perhaps his most beautiful lines : 

LA JEUNE CAPTIVE. 

" L'epi naissant miirit, de la faux respecte ; 
Sans crainte du pressoir, le pampre tout Tete 

Boit les doux presents de I'aurore ; 
Et moi, comme lui belle, et jeune comme lui, 



272 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Quoique I'heure presente ait de trouble et d'ennui, 
Je ne veux point mourir encore. 

*' Je ne suis qu'au printemps, je veux voir la moisson ; 
Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison, 

Je veux achever mon annee. 
Brillante sur ma tige, et I'honneur du jardin, 
Je n'ai vu luire encore que les feux du matin, 

Je veux achever ma journee. 

• • • • • * * . 

Ainsi, triste et captif, ma lyre toutefois 
S'eveillait, ecoutant ces plaintes, cette voix, 

Ces voeux d'une jeune captive; 
Et secouant le faix de mes jours languissants, 
Aux douces lois des vers je pliais les accents 

De sa bouche aimable et naive. 

One last quotation gives a picture of the 
prison of St. Lazare, whence he went to the 
scaffold a few days after penning these lines: 

Ici meme, en ces pares ou la mort nous fait paitre, 

Ou la hache nous tire au sort, 
Beaux poulets sont ecrits ; maris, amants sont dupes. 

Caquetages ; intrigues de sots. 
On y chante, on y joue, on y leve des jupes; 

On y fait chansons et bon mots ; 
L'un pousse et fait bondir sur les toits, sur les vitres, 

Un ballon tout gonfle de vent, 
Comme sont les discours des sept cents plats belitres. 



ART AND LITERATURE 273 

Dont Barere est le plus savant. 
L'autre court ; I'autre saute ; et braillent, boivent, rient, 

Politiqueurs et raisonneurs; 
Et sur les gonds de fer soudain les portes orient, 

Des juges tigres nos seigneurs 
Le pourvoyeur parait. Quelle sera la proie 

Que la haclie appelle aujourd'hui? 

Frangois de Neufchateau, who became a 
Director after the revolution of Fructidor, and 
the younger Chenier, were perhaps the best 
dramatists of the epoch. The former hardly 
deserves extended notice. Chenier's Charles 
IX, played at the outbreak of the Revolution, 
had a great success as a political play, and he 
followed it up with several others that served 
as pegs on which excited audiences might hang 
their political hats. Voltaire's Brutus, un- 
playable half a century before, was all the 
vogue now; and the dramatist had only to air 
democratic sentiments to please his audience. 

The thing went far, and art suffered in the 
process. Plot and dialogue took on the 
feverish colours of the Revolution. Audiences 
howled la Carmagnole or the ga ira, before the 
curtain went up; and when the play began, 
revelled in highly-spiced, political dramatics, 
in which the Pope soon became the most 
reviled and popular of villains. The Pope 



274 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

drunk, the Pope kicked in the stomach by his 
brutal confederate George III, the Pope mak- 
ing love to Madame de Polignac, the Pope sur- 
sounded by the tyrants of Europe swallowed 
up by the flame-belching volcano of an en- 
chanted island, such were the titbits that 
brought moisture to the palates of the con- 
noisseurs of the drama in Paris. 

The efforts of Joseph Chenier to get his 
tragedy Timoleon^ played, at a moment when 
he was not in good repute with the Committee 
of Public Safety, may serve as an example of 
many similar incidents. The words, "We need 
laws, not blood," in his Charles IX, had dis- 
pleased Robespierre and Billaud-Varennes, and 
the Jacobins were resolved to prevent any new 
production. He read the Ms. of his Timoleon 
however, with great success, to the company 
of the Theatre de la Republique. Vilate may 
be left to continue the tale : 

Le lendemain je me trouve place, dans la Societe 
des Jacobins, pres David e't Michot. Celui-ci disait a 
I'autre : Ah ! la belle tragedie que celle de Timoleon; 
c'est un chef d'oeiivre; demande a Vilate. Je ne pus 
me defendre de rendre une justice eclatante . . . 
au genie de I'auteur. Le peintre (David) . . . 
nous repond: Chenier une belle tragedie! c'est im^ 
possible. Son ante a-t-elle jamais pu sentir la liberie 



ART AND LITERATURE 275 

pour la bien rendref Non, je n'y crois pas. A quel- 
ques jours de la, me trouvant avec Barere et Billaud- 
Varennes, on parle de Timoleon. Billaud ne put dis- 
simuler son humeur: Elle ne vaiit rien; elle n'aura 
pas Vhonneur de la representation. Qu'entend-il par 
ce vers contre-revolutionaire: 
N'est on jamais tyran quavec un diademef 
Barere, qui avait mele ses applaudissements a la lec- 
ture de la piece, mais auquel j'avais deja rapporte les 
propos de David, ajoute : Oui, il n'y a pas de genie 
revolutionaire ; elle manque dans le plan. Billaud a 
Barere : Ne souffrons pas qu'elle soit jouee. Barere : 
Donnons lui le plaisir de quelques repetitions. 

Several rehearsals were accordingly per- 
mitted to take place. Two performances 
followed. At the third there came a collapse. 

Ou laisse aller la tragedie jusqu' a la scene on Aris- 
tocles va pour placer le bandeau royal sur la tete de 
Timophane, sous pretexte que le peuple de Corinthe 
concentre son indignation. . . . 

A man in the pit thereupon rose and called 
out: 

Si le peuple eut besoin d' etre provoque pour s' elever 
contre la tyrannie, c'est' une injure faite au peuple 
frangais que de lui offrir cet exemple de faiblesse et 
d' ineptie. A bas la toile! 

The cry was taken up; a riotous scene fol- 
lowed; and presently: on pousse V horreur 
jusqu' au point de forcer Chenier a bruler 



276 FRENCH REVOLUTION 

lui-meme, sur le theatre, le fruit de huit mois de 
travaux et de veilles. 

Art, like literature, languished during the 
Revolution, or meretriciously touched herself 
up with the fashionable rouge. Before and 
after are great periods, but for the moment 
art seems to have lost its cunning; the artist, 
like David, turns politician. Fragonard and 
Greuze both survived to see the Empire, but 
lost their vogue. The touch of Greuze could 
hardly be appreciated in the age of Danton; 
the luscious sweetness of Fragonard was in 
like case; both of these great artists were 
ruined by the Revolution and died in poverty. 
^Instead of these graceful masters of the false 
pastoral taste of the decaying century, a robust 
group of military painters arises, Vernet, Char- 
let, Gericault, and later Raff et, most brutal, but 
most candid portrayer of the armies of the Re- 
public. The false classical style, inherited from 
the period of Louis XVI, is metamorphosed by 
David and Gros, becomes inflated, declamatory, 
vapid, and wooden. David's immense picture, 
the most insistent canvas now hanging in the 
Louvre, representing the three Horatii swear- 
ing to Rome that they would conquer or die, 
gives the note of the period. False sentiment, 



ART AND LITERATURE 277 

mock heroics, glittering formula, lay figure at- 
titude, all are there. 

A few artists succeeded in carrying the 
elegance of the i8th century through the storm 
into the period beyond, notably Prud'hon, 
who has been called the Watteau of the Revo- 
lution. His portraits of the women of the 
Bonaparte family, Josephine, Hortense, Paul- 
ine, have all the grace and fascination of the 
earlier age, merge with it the abandon of the 
Directoire period, and touch the whole with 
the romanticism and individualism of the com- 
ing century. In terrible contrast with these 
lovely and alluring women of the new age, 
is the grim figure caught in a few masterly 
strokes by David, as Marie Antoinette, proud 
and unbending as ever, but shorn of all the 
glory of Versailles, her face haggard, her hair 
gray, dishevelled, mutilated by scissors, passed 
by on the prisoner's cart on her way to the 
guillotine. It is the guillotine, in art as in 
politics the most potent of solvents, that stands 
between Trianon and the romantics. 

END 



INDEX 

OF NAMES OF PLACES AND PERSONS 



Abbaye, 1', 153. 

Aiguillon, due d', Z7, 76, 95- 

Aix en Provence, 230. 

Aix la Chapelle, 172. 

Alembert, d', 18, 19, 

Almaia, 23. 

Alsace, 106, 

Amsterdam, 34. 

Areola, 247. 

Argonne, 149, 157. 

Arras, 199. 

Artois, Cte d', 55, 62, 71, 100. 

Artois, Ctsse d', ZZ- 

Augereau, 250. 

Aulard, 8. 

Avignon, v. 

Babeuf, 244, 245, 246. 
Bailly, 55, 58, 71, 'jz, 74, 86, 

123, 129, 198. 
Bale, 229, 249. 
Barere, 159, 167, 168, 176, 180, 

183, 187, 213, 217, 225, 228. 
Barras, 159, 221, 224, 237, 238, 

240, 241, 242, 250, 257. 
Barry, Mme. du, 14, 37. 
Barthelemy, 229, 249, 250. 
Bassano, 247. 
Bastille, 66, 67, 105. 
Bayle, 15. 
Beauharnais, Vcte de, y6, 186, 

189. 
Beauharnais, Josephine, 241, 

242. 



Beaumarchais, 21, 22, 23. 
Bernadotte, 258, 259. 
Besenval, 63, 65, 66, 67, 70. 
Billaud, 142, 193, 213, 218, 

219, 225, 228. 
Biron, 186, 189, 190, see also 

Lauzun. 
Blanc, 4, 5. 
Blondel, 82. 
Boissy d' Anglas, 248. 
Bonaparte, 133, 237, 238, 242, 

243, 247-253, 256, 259-261; 

see also Napoleon I, 
Bordeaux, 185. 
Bouille, 108, 109, 113, 117, 

118, 136, 166. 
Boyer Fonfrede, 197. 
Breteuil, 64, 71. 
Breze, Dreux, 58, 59. 
Brienne, see Lomenie. 
Brissot, 84, 128, 131, 132, 135, 

136, 159, 161, 187, 188, 197. 
Brittany, 187. 
Broglie, 63, 66. 
Brunswick, 136, 140, 143, 149, 

150, 154, 157, 158, 170, 182. 
Brutus, 21, 273. 
Buzot, 174, 187, 188, 198. 

Calonne, 34, 39, 41-43- 
Calvin, 17. 

Cambaceres, 224, 230. 
Cambon, 128, 159, 176, 218. 
Campo Formio, 251. 



279 



28o 



INDEX 



Carlyle, 4. 

Car not, 159, 187, 216, 217, 240, 

242, 249, 250. 
Carrier, 199, 200, 225, 226, 

270, 271. 
Carteaux, 192. 
Cassano, 256. 
Castiglione, 246. 
Cathelineau, 187. 
Cercle des kgaiix, 245. 
Chabannes, Mile. de. 210. 
Chalier, 186. 
Championnet, 254, 257. 
Charette, 187, 234. 
Charles, Archduke, 247, 254. 
Charlet, 276. 
Chateau Gontier, 198. 
Chateauvieux, 108, 136, 268. 
Chaumette, 208. 
Chenier, A., 209, 267-273. 
Chenier, J., 216, 250, 267, 273- 

275- 
Clairon, 2,3- 
Claviere, 134, 135. 
Clermont-Tonnerre, 59, 129. 
Cluh Breton, 57, 58, 94. 
Cluh de Clichy, 248, 249. 
Cluh du Pantheon, 245. 
Cobenzl, 251. 

Coblenz, 130, 135, 170, 227. 
Coburg, 192, 200. 
Collot, 193, 196, 205, 213, 220, 

225, 228, 268. 
Condorcet, 78,^ 128, 159, 198. 
Constant, Benj., i, 248. 
Corday, Charlotte, 188, 189, 

269, 270. 
Cordeliers, 109, 120, 121, 123. 
Couthon, 128, 187, 195, 208, 

217, 220, 221. 
Cromwell, no, 142. 
Custme, 170. 176, 186, 189. 

Danton, 40, 120, 122, 124, 128, 
136, 144, 148, 150, 151, 154, 
155, 156, 158, 159, 166, 171- 



176, 185-188, 191-194, 202- 

208, 244, 245, 265. 
Dauphine, 44, 94. 
David, 276, 277. 
Desmoulins, 64-66, 91, 104, 

155, 197, 204, 205, 207, 208, 

265, 266. 
Diderot, 18, 19. 
Dreux Breze, see Breze. 
Dubois, 14. 
Ducos, 257. 
Ducrest, 2>Z- 
Dumouriez, 21, 134-136, 157, 

158, 168, 170, 174, 176. 

filie, 68. 

Elizabeth, Princess, 232. 
England, 171. 
fispremenil, d', 44. 

Fabre d' Eglantine, 262. 

Ferdinand IV, 254. 

Fersen, 117. 

Feuillants, 124, 128, 129, 131. 

Figaro, 22, 23, 

Fleurus, 215. 

Fontainebleau, 35. 

Fouche, 159, 196. 

Foulon, 74. 

Fouquier Tinville, 196. 

Fragonard, 276. 

France, Anatole, 9. 

Francis II, 135. 

Frangois de Neufchateau, 

250, 272>. 
Franklin, no. 
Fred. William II, 135, 229. 
Frejus, 260. 
Freron, 226. 
Friuli, 247. 

Gensonne, 128, 197. 

Gericault, 276. 

Girondins, 159, 161, 163, 165, 

170-177, 180-185. 
Gobel, 203, 210. 



I 



INDEX 



281 



Gohier, 257. 
Gregoire, 90, 159. 
Grenoble, 44. 
Gretry, 82. 
Greuze, 276. 
Gros, 276. 
Guadet, 128. 
Guise, 13. 

Hanriot, 182, 183, 184, 206, 
217, 220, 221. 

Hardenberg, 229. 

Hebert, 41, 84, 92, 144, i8a- 
182, 190, 191, 194-197, 202, 
204, 206, 207, 244, 266. 

Henry IV, 13. 

Hoche, 200, 233, 234, 246. 

Holland, 171. 

Hood, 192. 

Hugo, 3. 

Hullin, 68. 

Isnard, 128, 183, 228. 

Jacobin Club, 94. 

Jaures, 7, 8. 

Jemmappes, 170. 

Jervis, 246. 

Jordan, 248. 

Joubert, 247, 258, 259. 

Jourdan, 200, 214, 226, 227, 

241, 242, 247, 250, 254, 255, 

258, 259. 

Kellermann, 157. 
Kleber, 199. 
Koln, 227. 

La Barre, 18. 

La Fayette, 71-74, 78, 86^88, 
98, 105, 120, 121, 123, 129, 

131, 135, 139, HO, 142, 149, 

168. 
La Force, 154, 
Lally, 74. 
Lamartine, 4, 5. 
Lamballe, Prsse. de, 153, 154. 



Lameth, y6, 129. 

La Motte Valois, 39, 40. 

Lamoignon, 43. 

Lanjuinais, 159, 160, 228. 

Larevelliere, 240. 

La Rochefoucauld, y6, 78, 140. 

La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, 

129. 
La Roche jacquelein, 79, 198. 
La Trebbia, 257. 
Launay, de, 67, 68. 
Lauzun, ^y, see also Biron. 
Leibnitz, 15. 
Le Mans, 199. 
Leoben, 247, 249. 
Leopold, 113, 130, 135. 
Letourneur, 240, 249. 
Lomenie de Brienne, 43-46. 
Lonato, 246. 
Longwy, 149. 
Lorraine, 106, 149. 
Louis XIV, 13, 14, 15. 
Louis XV, 14, 15, 26, 27, 33, 

35, 37- 

Louis XVI, 22, 25, 30, 33, 34- 

36, 38, 40-42, 46, 48, 52, 53, 
56-59, 63-65, 70, 73, 74, 80- 
82, 84, 87-90, 95, 100, 102- 
106, 112, 114-118, 121-123, 
125-127, 131, 132, 134, 137- 
139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 
163-170. 

Louis XVII, 169, 172, 231, 

232. 
Louis XVIII, see Cte de 

Provence. 
Louis Philippe, 3. 
Loustallot, 91, 265. 
Lou vet, 162, 163, 228. 
Luckner, 135. 
Lyons, 175, 185, 186. 

Macdonald, 215, 257. 
Msestricht, 172. 
Maillard, 85, 153- 
Mainz, 170, 176, 189. 
Malesherbes, 167. 



282 



INDEX 



Mallet, 265. 

Malta, 253. 

Mandat, 144, 145, 

Mantua, 243, 247. 

Manuel, 136, 140. 

Marat, 92, 106-108, 113, 119, 
120, 132, 133, 143, 144. 155, 
161, 163, 166, 176, 177, 181, 
184, 188, 189. 

Marie Antoinette, 36-41, 43> 
52, 55, 62, 82, 84, 87, 88, 
100, 113, 115, 117, 130, 134, 
138, 140, 196, 197, 277. 

Marceau, 68, 199. 

Marseilles, 49, 175, 185, 186, 
192, 230. 

Massena, 247, 254, 260. 

Mazarin, 13. 

Menou, 236, 237. 

Merlin de Douai, 250, 257. 

Metz, 113, 116. 

Michelet, 4, 5, 7. 

Mignet, 2, 3, 9- 

Mirabeau pere, 26. 

Mirabeau fils, 21, 50, 55, 58. 
60, 89, 95, 98-100, 104, 114, 
115, 120, 162, 244, 265. 

Miranda, 172. 

Montbeliard, 132. 

Montesquieu, 16, 51. 

Montmorency, 13. 

Moreau, 215, 226, 242, 247, 
256, 257. 

Moulin, 257. 

Mounier, 45, 56, 60, 94. 

Murat, 20. 

Nancy, 108. 

Nantes, 187, 199, 200. 

Napoleon I, 3, 18, 21, see also 

Bonaparte. 
Napoleon III, 5. 
Narbonne, Cte de, 132, 134. 
Necker, 34, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52, 

53, 55, 59, 63, 64, 70, 95, 98, 

109. 
Neerwinden, 174. 



Nelson, 254. 
Newton, 15, 
Noailles, y6, 95. 
Nootka Sound, 99. 
Normandy, 32, 98, 114, 175, 

186-188. 
Novi, 259. 

Orleans, due Regent, 16. 
Orleans, due figalite, 59, 119, 

120, 122, 155, 195, 198. 
Pache, 206. 
Pacy, 188. 
Paine, T., 159. 

Petion, 131, 138, 140, 141, 198. 
Pichegru, 200, 226, 229, 241, 

242, 248, 250. 
Pillnitz, 135. 
Pius VI, 102. 
Poitou, 172. 
Polignac, 37. 

Pompadour, 14, 25, 33, 37. 
Provence, Cte de, 116, 117, 

130, 232, 233, 257. 
Prud'hon, 277. 
Pyramids, 253. 

Quesnay, 25. 
Quiberon, 233. 

Raffet, 276. 

Rambouillet, 35. 

Rastatt, 251. 

Rewbell, 224, 240, 255. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 13. 

Richelieu, Due de, 14, 37. 

Rivoli, 247. 

Robespierre, 4, 18, 90, 91, 112, 
115, 124, 128, 132, 142, 148, ' 
155, 159, 163-166, 173, 17s, 
179, 182, 183, 187-194, 197, 
202-205, 208-223, 244, 265. 

Rochambeau, no, 135, 136. 

Rohan, 39, 40. 

Roland, 134, 135, 198. 

Roland, Mme., 162, 198, 209. 

Rossignol, 190, 199- 



INDEX 



283 



Rouen, 114. 

Rouget de Lisle, 133, 266, 

267. 
Rousseau, 18-20, 51, 211, 214. 
St. Cloud, 114-116, 121. 
St. Denis, 15. 
Ste Menehould, 117. 
St. Germain, 35. 
St. Helena, 3, 
St. Just, 159, 187, 195, 205- 

208, 214, 216, 219, 221. 
St. Lazare, 272. 
St. Heard, 153. 
St. Vincent, 246. 
Salm, 132. 
San Ildefonso, 246. 
Santerre, 167, 169. 
Sardinia, 171. 
Saumur, 186. 
Savenay, 199. 
Savoy, 171. 
Seze, 167. 
Sieyes, 50, 55, 56, 60, 160, 208, 

216, 224, 248, 251, 255-261. 
Simon, 197, 232. 
Sorel, 7. 
Souham, 215. 
Spain, 171, 

Stael, Mme. de, 1-3, 249. 
Stockach, 254. 
Stofflet, 234. 
Sully, 13. 
Suvaroff, 256-260. 
Sybel, von, 7. 

Taine, 58. 

Talleyrand, 95, 105, 248, 249. 



Tallien, 159, 216, 250. 
Temple, the, 147, 154. 
Theot, 213, 214. 
Thiers, 2, 3, 5, 9. 
Tocqueville, 5. 
Toulon, 192. 
Treilhard, 257. 
Trier, Archb. of, 130. 
Tronchet, 167. 
Turgot, 25. 

United States, 34. 

Valenciennes, 189. 
Valmy, 157, 158. 
Vandamme, 215. 
Varennes, 117, 118. 
Vaudreuil, -^y. 
Vendee, 172, 174. 
Verdun, 117, 149-151, I57- 
Vergniaud, 84, 128, 134, 138, 

159, 169, 197, 265. 
Versailles, 13, 14, 23, 24, 81, 

85, 86. 
Vizille, 44, 45. 
Voltaire, 9, 16-21, 51, 211. 

Washington, no. 
Wattignies, 200. 
PVilliam Tell, 21. 
Wimpffen, 188. 

Yorktown, 34. 

Zurich, 260. 



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W. F. JOHNSON'S FOUR CENTURIES OF THE PANAMA 

CANAL 

With 16 illustrations and 6 colored maps. $3.00 net ; bv mail. 
$3.27. 

" The most thorough and comprehensive book on the Panama Canal."— 

Nation. 

JOHN L. GIVENS' MAKING A NEWSPAPER 

The author was recently with the Mw York Evening Sun. 
$1.50 net ; by mail $].62. 

Some seventy-five leading newspapers praise this book as the 
best detailed account of the business, editorial, reportorial and 
manufacturing organization of a metropolitan journal. It should 
be invaluable to those entering upon newspaper work and a 
revelation to the general reader. 

THE OPEN ROAD THE FRIENDLY TOWN 

Compiled by E. V. Lucas. Full gilt, illustrated cover linings, 
each (cloth) $1.50 ; (leather) $2.50. 

Pretty anthologies of prose and verse from British and 
American authors, respectively for wayfarers and the urbane. 

^^ If the reader will send hia name and address the publishers will send, 
from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS (x-'07) NEW TOEK 



FOURNIER'S 



Napoleon the First 

TRANSLATED BY 

Margaret B. Corwin and Arthur D. Bissell 

Edited by Prof E. G. BOURNE of Yale. 
With a full critical and topical bibliography. 750 pages, 12 mo, ^2.00 net. 



N. Y. SUN:— 

' ' Excellent . . . Courtesy probably makes the 

editor place it after the works of and . . . 

there can be no doubt as to the superiority as a his- 
tory of Pournier's book." 

TIMES' SATURDAY REVIEW:— 

' * An authoritative biography . . . admirably 
adapted to American needs and tastes." 

SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN:— 

" This notable biography . . . The work of 
translation has been accomplished in a very satisfac- 
tory manner." 

DIAL:— 

*' One of the best of the single volume biographies 
and its value is greatly enhanced by the exhaustive 
bibliography which is appended." 

CRITIC:— 

*' This present translation gives in one single, com- 
pact volume, well-bound, on good paper and in clear 
type what by competent judges is deemed, on the 
whole, the best Napoleonic biography extant . . . 
This book is both serviceable and admirable in every 
sense." 



HENRY HOLT .y COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. (vii) CHICAGO 



H 154 82 



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